I (or someone else) might have talked about it in this thread before, but Bad North is a pretty neat game. Basically it’s about defending islands, each with their own procedurally-generated layout, from waves of invaders, who are supposed to be vikings, I think. You go from island to island, with your group of squads, which increases in size and gets better equipped with the money you get from each island.
It’s primarily a strategy game, which shows itself in two ways — how you control the squads on the island you’re on, defending against the waves of enemies, and the squads you choose to send to each island against the enemies you know will attack you there, keeping in mind the layout and the strength of each squad etc., and the fact that you have to complete a certain number of islands every turn, or you’ll get swallowed up by the Tide, and lose.
It’s a very replayable game, thanks to the randomness, and the new options for starting squads you get after playthroughs where you do certain things.
You get three kinds of units, spearmen, archers and swordsmen, whereas the enemy have a whole lot more — infantry and archers and swordsmen and berserkers and giants and axe-throwers and last, but certainly not least, the dreaded crossbow giants. Each unit has their own counters, for both sides.
The biggest problem with this game is this: whether you win the game or not will heavily depend on the layout of the last island, and primarily whether you have adequate cover from the crossbow giants, who are just ridiculously strong. They can’t be attacked by your swordsmen without losing half your squad on the way there, and the other half while fighting them, and spearman can’t hold corners against them because they round the corner, and then just stand there just out of their reach and shoot them to death. I’ve only won the game once, and I was incredibly lucky on my last fight.
It’s a good game, and pretty darn cheap too.