Tactical Mind Reviews

i have no sanity left 10/10

Tactical Mind is a minimalist looking turn based strategy game for the Nintendo Switch (but somehow found it's way to Steam). There's actually a welcome depth to the game but it's convoluted even with a helpful tutorial... definitely aimed at the wrong crowd on the Switch, and with such poor/phoned in minimalist graphics it didn't win any fans on Steam either. Gameplay consists of moving your "pawns" on the puzzle grid to capture energy and defeat the enemy, but unlike Chess, each piece has a number of different capabilities apart from just moving (they can create other pawns and all kinds of things). I can see what the developer was trying to do but it's overall a misfire, and I'll pin the failure down to a simply lacklustre technical implementation. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game features extremely lazy, minimalist "art" and low polygon assets, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Tactical Mind is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

It's certainly worth attention. The rules are simple. The interface is fine for the purpose. You have to figure out how to win. This far I could not find a way to beat normal AI on the 2nd level. Not for the lack of trying. (EDIT: no longer the case, turns out I overlooked that the 5 piece does not get tired after action... changes everything strategy-wise.) So the challenge value is pretty high.