Who would win in a fight out of Zeus and a mammoth? Minotaurs against halflings? Snake archers against potion sellers? They’re the showdowns society yearns for but history denies… no longer! Now we have Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.
It’s not accurate, of course – no one describes anything as “totally” with a straight face. And TABS, as everyone calls it, doesn’t have a straight face. It has a googly-eyes and lollops like a drunken marionette. It is a raspberry in the face of serious army-commanding games and I love it for it.
TABS is so simple to play. You spend points to build an army, place it, then sit back and watch the fight – you don’t control anything in real-time other than the camera. What’s in your army depends on how many points you have to spend. You might spend 2230 points on a mammoth, for instance, or use the same amount to buy four flying Valkyrie – they’re a bloody nuisance. Or you might spend 4000 points on two Zeus-es, or 4200 on three scarecrow, which are better than they sound.
The motley roster is half the fun. There’s the Stone Age faction, Farmer, Medieval, Ancient, Viking and, as of about a week ago, Dynasty (Pirate and Renaissance are on the way) and they’re all a bit silly. They have units such as wheelbarrow which charge into the opposing ranks, or longships which are carried and thrown on the enemy – they don’t sail at all! There’s a monkey king, headbutters, haybalers and stoners(!). And those snake archers? They actually shoot snakes.
Even bards are not boring. In TABS, they behave like the Pied Piper, baiting the opposing army into following them – right off the edge of the map if needs be!
I turn my back for one minute and my son has all hell break loose! @LandfallGames #tabs pic.twitter.com/Jl2wdowsOC
— Bertie (@Clert) April 10, 2019
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The other half of the fun comes in simply watching the carnage unfold. The physics-based ridiculousness makes for an unpredictable maelstrom every time. What’s more, TABS is gorgeous to look at. It radiates cheeriness with bright colours and cartoony polygonal characters, and worlds.