Battle for Wesnoth

Overview

The Battle for Wesnoth is a free turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. It can be downloaded at www.wesnoth.org. It features over a dozen official single-player campaigns, a full tutorial to introduce players to the game, online multiplayer, several different races, and rich 2d graphics. It was originally released on June 18th, 2003 and was added to Steam on May 2nd, 2018.

Gameplay

Core Gameplay

The gameplay is most similar to games such as Advance Wars and Fire Emblem. The game is played on a grid of hexagons, each of which represents a different type of terrain (forest, plains, mountains, etc.). Terrain also effects the battlefield by increasing or decreasing the odds of a unit's attacking being successful. Players capture villages to increase their gold supply, which they can then spend to recruit new units in town. The goal is typically to eliminate the enemy team's commander, although there are other goals in single player scenarios. An interesting feature in Battle for Wesnoth is Zone of Control. If a unit enters a hex that is adjacent to an enemy unit, it enters the enemies Zone of Control and forces the unit to stop and either attack or wait.

Experience and Levels

As units fight, they gain experience for each enemy killed. Units can level up and even branch out into multiple new class types. For example, a player can have a common level 1 horseman become either a level 2 lancer or level 2 knight when he levels up. In campaigns, experienced units are carried over between scenarios.

Unit Traits

When a unit is created, they are usually randomly assigned 1 or 2 traits, except in special cases. A unit trait modifies the unit in small ways, such as slightly increasing damage or allowing the unit to move farther per turn.

Unit Alignment and Time of Day

The game also features good-evil racial alignments with 3 different types, lawful, neutral, and chaotic. Depending on the time of day, a units attack damage may be increased or decreased. During the day, a lawful unit's attack will increase by 25% and a chaotic unit's attack decreased by 25%. At night, chaotic units will attack for 25% more and lawful units 25% less. Neutral units attack damage remains the same no matter what time of the day.

Attack Types

While all of the attacks in the game are either melee or ranged, each attack also has a specific type. A Spearman who attacks with his spear will do a pierce type melee attack, while an Orcish Assassin attacking with throwing knives will do a blade type ranged attack. Using different attack types against different units plays a major role in stratagey as different units will be more resistant to some attack types than others. A few attacks also have special abillities. Spearman who attack with their spear have the firststrike abillity which allows them to attack first under any circumstance. Other common effects are the abillity to poison and magical attacks which always have a 70% chance of hitting.

Status Effects

During battle, units can be infuelenced by different status effects that result from a certian special attacks. Some common status effects are poison, a poisoned unit will take damage at the beginnning of each turn unless cured, and slow, a units movements are reduced for a few turns.

Add-ons

In addition to the content that comes with the game, an Add-ons button is located in the main menu that gives the player direct access to a numerous amount of maps, campaigns, and races. Downloading any content will restart the game with the downloaded items ready to use.