Pre-order Tactical Monsters Rumble Arena

Camex Games recently gave us an early look at Tactical Monsters Rumble Arena, its upcoming strategic, turn-based RPG for PC and mobile. From what we saw, it looks to be an engaging title with a deep roster of characters. Players won't have to spend hours — or even more than a few minutes — on a match, but they'll still enjoy plenty of strategy.

The basic premise of the game is that you control a team of monsters, each with specific strengths and weaknesses, and pit them against teams of other monsters (either AI or player-controlled). When you defeat them, you level up your team and recruit new monsters, but there's much more to it than just that. Your monsters each have special powers and distinct movement, which you'll need to use to your advantage.

Combat takes place on a hex grid, which gives you more range of movement since you're allowed to move diagonally to position your monsters more precisely than a more limiting four-sided grid. This also means there are more angles you can attack — and be attacked — from, so you'll need to keep an eye out for those openings and use cover (or other heroes) to block your weak points.

Some of your monsters are strong melee fighters and will be your front-line combatants, and some will be ranged fighters who are best kept behind the melee monsters. Some ranged fighters are complete glass cannons that are capable of one-shotting opposing monsters but vulnerable to quick defeat. Others are able to dash around the map and can cross huge distances easily, but are weak hitters. There are also magic-using monsters in this mix, who utilize a variety of healing, long-range offensive magic and close-range offensive spells. You'll need to take into account what types of forces your opponent is bringing to the battle (so you have an appropriate counter) and the layout of the battlefield, with its opportunities for cover and line of sight. How you build your team is key to how far you'll progress in the game.

The art is very cartoon-ish, but it works for the genre. There are humorous bits thrown into some of the character designs, like Vlad, a vampire, who looks the part with a cloak and fangs. Then there's Nobu, an undead samurai that looks like he belongs on late-night Adult Swim versus a zombie apocalypse movie. He has special active and passive abilities that increase his likelihood of landing critical hits on enemies, making him a powerhouse fighter. There are more with fun, pun-named characters, like Billie, a minotaur who's half-man and half-horse (goat). Billie has a cool passive ability that boosts his defense, mobility and speed for the first turn of every battle, so he can come out of the gate strong as he gallops into battle.

Tactical Monsters takes a nice "ease in" approach to teaching the basics. You'll work through a tutorial campaign that steadily unlocks new monsters for your roster while showing you how to use them. The game rates your success, via a one- to three-star system, and while it's pretty easy going early in the game, you'll see more one- and two-star results later on. This additional challenge is by no means insurmountable because you'll steadily unlock new monsters, which allow you to rework your team and return to getting three stars in those tougher missions.

In Tactical Monsters Rumble Arena, there's a nice mix of game modes, including a single-player adventure mode, PvP, a "Guerrilla Warfare" mode (a series of gauntlet runs against some of the game's bosses), and several more modes. The game supports online multiplayer, which allows you to challenge other players for bragging rights.

Developer Camex Games has post-launch content and new features planned, including cross-platform play. Eventually, PC players on Steam will be able to battle their friends on iOS or Android or even take their experience from the PC to their mobile device.

Tactical Monsters Rumble Arena will hit Steam Early Access in November and will be available for PC, iOS and Android, so keep an eye out for it.