Tideborn Command

Tideborn Command drops you on a scatter of islands and asks you to grow a settlement while fending off raiders who arrive by sea. The clever bit is that your economy and your defence pull from the same workers, so every soldier you train is someone who isn't fishing or building. That tension runs through the whole game.

It plays in real time but you can slow things down to issue orders, which keeps the chaos readable on a small screen. Maps are compact enough to finish in a sitting, and there's a nice campaign that gradually layers in new mechanics instead of dumping them on you at once.

The difficulty ramps hard around the midpoint, and I had to replay a couple of maps to get my build order right. That stung at the time, but figuring out the solution was exactly the kind of satisfaction I want from a strategy game.

What we liked

• Shared-worker economy creates real tension
• Slow-mo ordering keeps it manageable
• A campaign that teaches as it goes