Found It is a new little experiment wherein I do my best to track down small, freeware and indie titles to share with the GameInformer community. Today's pick is Battleships Forever.
Battleships Forever could easily pass for a modern Kickstarter project or Steam Greenlight release, and could probably find people to fund it. Created 5 years ago, its simplistic art style means it looks just as good today as it did when it was created. Playing like a mix of EVE Online style space simulation and fast paced RTS, players control everything from what their guns target to the direction that their ships face. Each segment of the ships can be destroyed and that seemed to create room for multiple strategies during the time I spent with it. Aggressively rushing in and focusing only on the orientation of a ship to keep it alive worked in the early missions, and the ability to carefully target pieces of enemy ships helped me out of sticky situations after I made mistakes.
The game comes with a couple dozen surprisingly complex ships spread across three categories, and isn't afraid to throw more into the mix early on. Beating one of the 10 "Career" missions unlocks new ships, weapons and classes to play around with in the game's bot based "Skirmish" mode. Accompanying the game is a standalone ship building tool that allows players to create and import their own ships for use in custom games.
Even though I've recently made the jump to PC, I still haven't developed a taste for RTS games. I just can't seem to get a grasp on managing a large group of units. I may be bad it, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize a game worthy of praise when I see it. Battleships Forever's tiny 11.9MB install can be found on it's Game Jolt page, free of charge.