Warside Review
Warside is a carbon copy of Advance Wars, but maybe that’s enough.
Warside. Lavabird / First Break Labs
Advance Wars is one of my all-time favorite series, the gold standard for turn-based strategy games. While the franchise has been dormant at Nintendo, aside from a remake, with no new titles since Advance Wars: Days of Ruin in 2008, indie studios have filled the gap with spiritual successors—Tiny Metal from Area 35, Wargroove from Chucklefish, and Athena Crisis from Nakazama Tech, to name a few. With Warside, Lavabird is the latest studio to dive into the space.
Warside. Lavabird / First Break Labs
Warside is about as close to Advance Wars as you can get without being part of the series. The 16-bit style pixel art presentation is nearly identical, with its top-down 2D map and split-screen battle animations. Warside is at a higher resolution, but if screenshots of the two weren’t labeled, you’d be hard pressed to say this wasn’t a new Advance Wars game.
The single-player campaign has you chasing down stolen world-shattering technology, battling across a vast continent over 30+ missions. The story is neither here nor there; the commander characters don’t have as much charm as the ones in Advance Wars or similar games, but the campaign allows you to experience some of their unique abilities.
There are 14 playable commanders, though you won’t see them all in the campaign. The commanders are spread over several factions; each of the factions has some unique units that create diversity in gameplay and tactics, especially when paired with their commanders’ specials. Some new units are particularly fun, such as the Rhino, which has a weak attack but can shove enemy units into mountains or water to instantly destroy them if you’re lined up right.
Along with the new units, some changes to typical game mechanics help differentiate Warside from Advance Wars, though the differences are minor. Armies don’t have headquarters to capture, so you typically must destroy all enemy units to complete missions. Captured cities start with 2HP and slowly gain health, so you must defend them to prevent rapid enemy recapture.
Warside. Lavabird / First Break Labs
Though the game is polished, Warside could use some improvements. For example, while we’re told that different terrain, such as forests or mountains, provides additional cover to increase unit defense, there’s no indicator in the UI to show how much of an advantage particular terrain offers. Meanwhile, some info presented to the player seems to have no use. For example, vehicle unit info includes numbers for fuel capacity, but this never comes into play in the campaign.
Playing through the campaign in standard difficulty, I was able to win every mission as long as I didn’t overextend myself. Players can start each mission on any difficulty they want, or replay them in other difficulty levels, so Warside offers greater challenges to players who desire them. Additionally, Warside includes a local or online multiplayer mode. Players also have access to a built-in mission editor to design single and multiplayer maps. Though it doesn’t yet support making full campaigns, there are opportunities here for nearly infinite content if players get on board.
Warside. Lavabird / First Break Labs
Warside is a nearly perfectly executed Advance Wars clone. The games are too similar to say Advance Wars is simply an inspiration; despite including some new units, commanders, and mechanical differences, Warside doesn’t do enough for me to call it original by any means. However, this might be enough for fans who simply want more Advance Wars. If this is the audience Lavabird wants to satisfy, I’d say Warside is a success.
Warside is available now on Steam and will be available on consoles at a later date.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
