Strategy games test your tactical skills, and if you have what it takes to come out on top in large-scale conflicts — or whatever you call it when a herd of mammoths slams into an army made up of knights, wizards, and musketeers. Coming to PlayStation Plus this month, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a playground to pit massive armies made up of all kinds of troops against each other in skirmishes of physics-based carnage.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator comes from Landfall, one of the two developers that teamed up to make this year’s indie sensation, Peak. Like Peak, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator grew out of a game jam, this one lasting just a week in 2016 and, according to Landfall, taking place in a castle in Sweden. From there, the game was built up over the next few years, entering early access in 2019 and getting a full release in 2021.
It’s a strategy game, but not in the way you might be expecting. In Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, combat happens automatically, rather than having you giving orders to specific units. The strategy here isn’t in the precise movements of your troops, but in the composition of your army. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has more than 100 distinct units spread across armies representing different historical periods, civilizations, as well as more outlandish combatants like animated skeletons. At the start of each stage, you’re given a limited amount of money to build your army based on what you think will be the best counter to the enemy you’re faced with. In most battles, the winner is the first to wipe out the other opposing army, but survival stages are also in the mix.
There’s more depth to Totally Accurate Battle Simulator than it might sound at first, even when the end result of your setup is just watching two armies smash into each other and flail around wildly. Each unit has distinct advantages and disadvantages that go beyond just strength. The mammoth might seem like it could squish anything in its path, for example, but its size and lack of maneuverability make it an easy target for well-placed ranged attackers. Fast-moving units or those with shields can pose a significant threat to slower, more powerful ones. And there’s always plenty of room for the unexpected, like when an explosive shot goes awry and destroys your own formation, or a pile-up of attackers blocks the path, sending entire battalions careening off a cliff in an attempt to find another way around.
At the same time, there’s joy in just letting battles play out and not stressing the outcome too much. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a game that understands how much fun it is to simply sit back and observe the chaos you let loose, with controls that let you speed up or slow down the action, and move the camera wherever you want around the battlefield, zooming in and out to focus on the most interesting parts of it. Or, you can take control of an individual unit, seeing the battle through their eyes until they’re inevitably wiped off the map as well.
Since its first release, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has also gotten some major updates worth checking out. One of the most substantial is a unit creator for adding even more troops to the game, with even more absurd combinations of abilities if you so choose. Online and local multiplayer modes are also available if you’d rather smash your wobbly armies against ones created by opponents in real time, rather than sticking to the scenarios included out of the box.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a perfect melding of strategy and silliness. If you want to test your ability to construct the perfect army to pierce the toughest defenses, that’s an opinion for you. If you’d rather just fill the map with the most bizarre assortments of troops you can muster and watch as they turn each other into paste, that’s fine, too. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator isn’t the deepest strategy game you’ll ever play, but it might be the funniest.
