ICBM News — November 17, 2020
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
ICBM was developed by SoftWarWare, and the second game to be published by Slitherine under their K-Project developer fund. A spiritual successor to the classic, DEFCON, ICBM is a strategic level real-time strategy game of nuclear destruction. You research nuclear related weapon technology, build up a nuclear stockpile, and use ships, planes and missiles to strike at your opponent's cities whilst protecting your own. It offers some interesting (yet light), strategic gameplay, an intuitive UI and some clever design choices that help minimise micromanagement.
My only gripe with the game is that it lacks depth, with its nuclear war theme feeling like a one-trick-pony. In fact, ICBM is so narrowly focussed on nuclear war, that it feels one dimensional when compared to other strategy games.
It's not just ICBM's limited scope: The game leans so single-mindedly on the nuclear Armageddon trope that I'm left wondering whether people's interest will quickly fade once the nuclear war gimmick wears off. For me, that was about six hours-worth of gameplay. By the time I had played ten hours-worth of ICBM, I felt as though I had seen everything the game had to offer. I racked up some more playtime for the purposes of this review but going forward, I don't feel inclined to play the game outside of the odd multiplayer match with friends.
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