Today’s Niche Spotlight is Gem Wizards Tactics, a turn-based tactics game by Keith Burgun Games.

Gem Wizards Tactics is a turn-based tactics game with procedurally generated maps and enemy placement, and three asymmetrical factions. Choose from the Business Demons, the Azure Order, or the Potatoes and lead your nation to victory against ancient evils. Build wild combos with special powers and abilities that can interact with units and the terrain in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.

You can find the gameplay trailer below.

Gem Wizards Tactics is available on Windows PC via Steam for $14.99 USD.

You can find the rundown (via Steam) below:

Playful tactics, weird magic, and endless challenge! Lead an army to liberate your people from an ancient evil!

Gem Wizards Tactics is a turn-based strategy game with randomly generated maps and weird asymmetrical factions! Designed around endless single player play, Gem Wizards Tactics has three factions each with their own unique abilities which not only combine within factions, but you can also pick up units from other factions and combine them into your army to create totally unheard of new strategies!

A new kind of single-player wargame
In many ways, Gem Wizards Tactics will feel familiar to fans of Advance Wars, Fire Emblem or X-Com. But unlike these games, the maps are randomly generated, and enemy units are spawning randomly as well. This means that the challenges are much less puzzle like, and a lot more emergent and surprising—so your strategies will have to be as well. In this original turn based tactical war game, you take your army through a series of battles in which you’ve gotta capture the flags before taking too many losses!

Take tight, puzzle-like tactics in the vein of Into the Breach and 868-HACK, add a big Fire Emblem-style overall package, and wrap the whole thing up in a nintendolicious candyflake aesthetic, and you have the new @keithburgun game, and it’s great. – Frank Lantz, Director of the NYU Game Center

Gem Wizards Tactics is a whimsical and approachable turn-based tactical game, much like Into the Breach; 3 asymmetric factions, procedurally-generated maps and enemies, excellent synergies. Super fun.” – Designer Plays on Steam

For the most part, every unit is extraordinary, which provides an excellent amount of depth when it comes to strategizing. – Turn Based Lovers

FEATURES

• Wild powers with fun and surprising side-effects! Drill for oil, which is slippery and lights on fire! Spray water around until you create new rivers! Freeze those rivers over with ice magic! Push people over the frozen ice floe, sliding uncontrollably into that hole you drilled! It’s like a wild Rube Goldberg Machine of tactics!
• Randomly generated maps! The map geometry, enemy squads you’re facing off, and Unit Rescue rewards are different every time you play!
• Three distinct factions with LOTS of asymmetry: the classic royal high fantasy knights of the Azure Order; the resource-exploiting, terrain-burning Business Demons, or the nature and weather-controlling Potatoes: each have their own unique playstyles and abilities. Better yet, there’s cross-pollination between the factions, so maybe you can find some neat combo for your Azure Knights sliding over a bunch of freshly fracked oil slicks! More factions coming soon!
• Twenty-six unique unit types, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and unique special abilities!
• Four game modes are currently available: a short tutorial, a custom game mode, a longer-form Campaign that has you doing a long series of battles, leveling up units and permanently losing others! And finally, a “single-player Elo” mode called Ranked Mode, where the game automatically adjusts its rank as you win more games. More game modes coming soon!
• Colorful pixel art and an original melodic soundtrack. (I mean, at least *I* think so. I made all of it myself, so perhaps I’m biased on this one, but I think the game looks and sounds pretty cool.)
• Lots of developer support in the form of new patches, balance changes and MORE: More factions, more game modes, more platform support – you name it! You may know about another game of mine: Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure. It originally launched on Android back in 2014, and we just put out another patch in Jan of 2021. The point is: I commit to my games pretty hard, and this game will get tons of awesome support in the future!

I also care deeply about what my players want to see in the game, so if you have any thoughts or ideas, please come chat with me on the discord about what you’d like to see in the future of Gem Wizards Tactics!

The Gem Wizards Universe also has partying undead skeletons, stuffed animal bunnies, huge bug people, and a bunch more, so look forward to new factions being introduced in free future updates! Coming to Steam for Windows. Later on, will be coming to more platforms as well.

From the designer of 100 Rogues, and Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure.

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Image: Steam