Looking back at some of the best of 2022

Okay, confession time. This list has been sitting in our drafts since 2022 (it happens). But we didn’t want to just delete it, because the funny thing about a good strategy game is that it doesn’t really go stale. Our editors each picked the 2022 release that stuck with them the most, and a few years on those games have only gotten more complete and a lot cheaper. So consider this less a “best of 2022” and more a handful of great strategy games you might have missed, most of which are probably on sale right now. Here’s what our team went with.

Perafilozof

Against the Storm is the best example of continuous improvement, content additions, and updates made based on community feedback and you are hard-pressed to find a dozen bad reviews in its thousands. This dark fantasy settlement builder with its production chains, roguelite replayability, and adorable art design has captured many hearts. It doesn’t have a campaign, much of story or characters but its gameplay loop of setting up a new settlement in a few hours to support your overall progress and then jumping to the next has proved to be both fun and fresh.

You can buy Against the Storm on Steam

Orcosaurus

I was forced at gunpoint by our overlord Seth (Editors note: it was a very big gun) to write this – kinda, sorta. It’s hard for me to pick the one GOTY. Always has been hard for me, because I have a lot of love and acknowledgment for what game developers have to do, to serve us their vision of a video game. So this is not the be all, and all for gaming but mere praise for a title released in 2022 that is more than praiseworthy:

Arcanium: Rise of Akhan by developer Supercombo Inc.

It’s a rogue-like deck builder with overworld exploration, three-lane combat, gorgeous art and more that will make sure you are busy for a while.

The three-lane combat is where the game shines the most as it is an extremely deep and complex system that not only allows you to pick and choose your hero team it also factors in positioning and lane switching. Those mechanics broaden the usual roguelike deckbuilder immensely.

Another, very deep part of the game is the characters, who all have their unique playing style. And not to forget the well-done art. I do not mind anthropomorphic characters and furries get free fap material.

So if you can stomach it, go for the game. You will not regret it and will have a blast. It’s a fantastic card game that stayed in my library from its 1.0 release in 2022 till now (it’s been in early access since 2020 but I will count the release date of the 1.0 version as the official one). Two green thumbs up.

You can buy Arcanium: Rise of Akhan on Steam

Flash Trouserman

Imagine the scene where you are an hour into the latest challenge, everything is progressing nicely, victory is all but assured. Suddenly the earth begins to move. Within seconds it has manifested into a huge Crustacean which promptly stomps through your village destroying everything in its path before disappearing into the ground

This is the world of Kainga, released in full on Dec 22, a city builder that offers a plethora of weird and wonderful beasts, acid-spitting Snails, Flatheads, Trudgers, and Leviathans. These are all spread across several stunningly distinctive biomes, which all in turn offer their own unique set of challenges. 

Using a variety of different thinkers, all with their own style of play, the challenges/quests you face vary in length and complexity which means games can last as little as 30 minutes to as long as you want to keep building in the given map.

Kainga’s beautiful art style and a dizzying array of weird and wonderful creatures and creations offer the player an absorbing, deeply challenging, and most importantly fun game to play

You can buy Kainga on Steam

MattyRasker

For me, Dune: Spice Wars is my Game Of The Year 2022. Choosing an Early Access title as a Game Of The Year could be considered to be a controversial decision. My argument here is Dune: Spice Wars started as a well-built, thoroughly enjoyable strategy game that blends Real-Time and 4X, which is getting better over time, but without the additional cost of DLC. An example here is the addition of the CHAOM market and House Corrino – both excellent additions that you’d normally find yourself paying for as additional content for your game.

The ambiance is perfect – aesthetically it is a nice game to look at, with menus being clear and easy to navigate. With the addition of the haunting, Middle Eastern vibe blended with synth work that makes up the soundtrack, the player is fluently submersed into the Dune Universe from the start.

Players of the classic Westwood Studios Real Time Strategies might struggle to adjust. But it was those classics that got me into PC Games in the first place, and as such, I had to find out what Shiro Games could add to the complex but unique Universe created by the literacy legend Frank Herbert. My opinion is, they’ve done it justice. I can’t wait to see what the result will be come version 1.0.

You can buy Dune: Spice Wars on Steam

Seth – Strategy Informer

Very few games bother to model electronic warfare and C3i, which is exactly the stuff I geek out over. In Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm your orders aren’t instant. They take time to actually reach the front, and the commander running that battalion might have his own ideas about how to carry them out (and that’s the way it should be). Soviet doctrine plays nothing like NATO, so you can’t just run your NATO playbook with a red coat of paint and expect it to work, and that’s the way it should be too. And the AI opponent is genuinely good, which is rarer in wargames than it should be. It was my game of the year in 2022 and it hasn’t left my drive since.

Now zoom forward to 2026, because the series just dropped its latest, Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, and it leans even harder into all of it. It’s a data nerd’s dream. Every nation has its own National Characteristics, Command Parameters, and full Orders of Battle, and the data tables are packed with era-correct hardware, guns, missiles, precision munitions, small arms and such, all modeled in the kind of detail that makes reading a stat sheet weirdly fun. And when the built-in scenarios run dry, you build your own, scenarios, campaigns, game data, artwork, even the sound effects, with real documentation to walk you through it. Southern Storm earned my 2022 pick. Cold War is why it’s still the series I point people to.

You can buy Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm on Steam, and the newest entry, Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, is here.

A few years on, these all still hold up, and most have only gotten better with post-launch support (Against the Storm alone just passed two million copies sold and is still getting updates). That’s the best part of covering indie strategy, the good ones keep growing long after release. Big thanks to our contributors for these picks, and to you for reading. Go check those sale pages, your backlog will thank you.