Warside is a freshly-released, turn-based strategy game for Steam from Lavabird and First Break Labs (makers of Cthulhu's Reach). We've been excited for it not just because of its lovely Advance Wars-style graphics and intuitive gameplay, but also for its promised co-op support. Well, now that the game is here, it turns out that co-op won't be arriving until the console ports come along. That's a shame, but the currently-available solo campaign and competitive multiplayer are nothing to sneeze at.
The single-player campaign consists of over 30 missions, each playable on four difficulty levels. The game walks players through the basics in the first few missions, introducing new unit types and mechanics at a gradual pace. You can do everything you'd expect in a strategy game: train troops and build a variety of vehicles, capture buildings to produce more resources, transport units and allies via land and air vehicles, and attack hostile units and bases.
Left-clicking on a unit will reveal its movement radius; right-clicking shows attack radius. It's easy to grasp even for people like me who rarely dabble in the genre, and the default difficulty is quite fair. There's also a story that throws in a bit of humor here and there, mostly in the form of taunts between the player's commander and the enemy's.
The game is a blast on both desktop and Steam Deck. The only downside at present is the lack of controller support. This will surely be added over time, given that Warside will come to consoles eventually. For now, gamers can play on Steam Deck by changing the controls to emulate mouse and keyboard (a fairly easy settings change via the Deck's UI). Moving the cursor with an analog stick works fine, though playing with an actual mouse is a bit faster and easier.
As for the promised co-op support, Lavabird states:
We . . . apologize for the missing local coop component to the game. This was intended to ship with together with our console launch, but in hindsight, we didn’t communicate this effectively to our community. We are continuously developing Warside and will add this feature as planned.
No, they certainly tell us that co-op wouldn't be ready for the Steam version's launch. At least it's coming!
For now, if you're looking for an intuitive and addictive turn-based strategy game and don't mind the lack of co-op, Warside is a good purchase. We'll publish a full co-op review when the time comes!
Warside sells for $26.99 on Steam. Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch versions will be released later in 2025.