Tyrannis

Tyrannis is the best video game adaptation I have seen of tabletop COIN games like those designed by Brian Train or Volko Ruhnke. The lack of proper polish and some confusing features do not ruin what is the DEFCON of counter-insurgency. Simple moves give rise to great complexity in this simulation of upto two government players (the game says they are "mercenaries" but any counter-insurgency player will recognize them as the state or security forces) and upto five insurgent factions. This game is lacking some basic features I would expect in commercial software these days. Specifically, there is no way to turn the music off! Neither is there any audio slider. The soundtrack is kinda generic but very satisfying to listen to and successfully captures the complex emotions which are present in any insurgent situation. However it saddens me that I cannot listen to my own music while playing this game. Of course I could route the audio through different speakers and reach the desired effect, and for me this did work, but for the average consumer it may be awkward. Another thing that really makes the gameplay worse is the lack of ability to re-map the hotkeys. I have a mouse with five …

I have no clue what I'm doing, 10/10

Just a shame I got a TEST message after I won instead of a GG

The tutorial is pretty much required reading, and its a long one. The emergency alert sound was jarring and had my scrambling for my phone at first...not sure why that played during the tutorial. The interface feels very difficult at times. I tried to click the custom faction creator and couldn't figure out what buttons to push to do anything. The setting and visual presentation of the game is what made me buy it.

This was a meaningful game to me. Although I do not always play it, I found the lore within it to be very interesting. I also liked how simple this game was to learn and to play. I enjoyed playing with with friendly AI to help me. Back on the lore, I found the writing to be well developed and the characters in them to be quite nice. I wish this to have more development. Illustrations, a campaign, maybe even some more content.

Fun game, gets dull if you try to play it single player, but still has enough variety for a few games. Definitely recommended for multiplayer, though.