Waves of Steel

Had potential, most of it wasted. "Bosses" are stupidly easy or 1000 times harder than hardest dark souls. The biggest gun mission is the stupidest thing ever. Wish I could get my time and my money back. Avoid, not even worth it on sale. Also the dev has abandoned it because they got big mad it didn't make a ton of money. Sad.

A wonderful love letter to Warship Gunner 2, albeit much shorter. The story is forgettable but what matters here is the hilariously fun and yet in depth customization of the ships themselves. A wonderful arcade style Warship experience. The only thing I hate about this game is that it reminded me we'll probably never see Warship Gunner 3.

A nice indie game seemingly inspired by the old Naval Ops games. If you enjoy building your own ships and fight crazy superweapons you will have a blast.

This game strikes the perfect balance between arcade coolness and Silly. Buy if you like designing your own vehicle and then watching it explode and/or dominate in a battle.

Really scratched that itch for a WW2-style action-focused naval battle game, although the game does have fantasy craft like flying battleships, etc. Game has a decent length, the ship customization is accessible and fun too (do you add more armour to your cruiser or another 8-inch gun?), lightweight system requirements, and runs very well on Steam Deck. In addition to story missions, there is an extra mode that lets you create levels, allowing you to adjust the number and type of craft etc. Either way, there's nothing quite like unleashing a spread of torpedoes and taking out several ships at once. TL;DR if you like the idea of playing World of Warships or WarThunder's naval battles, but aren't fussed about the realism, this should pique your interest.

Interesting idea, really bad balance. I like the idea of building a custom war ship, but the default difficulty settings are nuts. Enemy ships are paper, but so are you. You have stuff like the mission Lost Sheep where you still only have destroyers (the smallest class you can build) and will be ambushed by 36 ships magically appearing (I'm not kidding, they literally just all float up from underwater) who are mostly cruisers and battleships. The fights aren't even remotely fair, it is always a one-sided curb stomp, with the times you stomp the AI being hardly more satisfying than the times they instantly kill you.