Outwitters Review

It's been a long time since we last heard from One Man Left, the developers of the fantastic Tilt to Live. They've been hard at work on their latest game, Outwitters, a turn-based strategy game with online multiplayer. They've been working on it for almost 2 years, and the effort shows. This is an amazing game that is easy to get into, is fast-paced, yet still rewards strategy.

Each team has a base that must be protected, that can take 5 hit points of damage. A unit can move and attack once per turn, though all units are limited by a resource called wits. These are used to move, attack, and create new units, with squares that can be claimed on the map for getting additional wits per turn. Not all wits need to be used in a single turn, so making limited moves is a perfectly acceptable strategy that could pay off down the road.

The mechanics are fairly basic, which is a good thing: there's no variable damage, everything does what it does consistently. Different teams can use a different specialty unit, but otherwise have the same basic 5 units. It makes the game easy to learn, and the small maps encourage fast play. Don't expect a lot of marathons, because it's possible for a unit to sneak in under the fog of war and start wailing away at the enemy base. It's all very exciting, but the game still encourages intelligent play. However, it's still accessible enough to where I was even able to take down one of the game's developers in our first match that we played.

The game also finally gets right what other games do not: Game Center authentication. A user's Game Center account is used to automatically log in, it's easy to search for friends for unranked matches or as teammates for the 2v2 mode, and new opponents can actually be added as friends in Game Center once it's all said and done. The league options give the game an interesting twist compared to other asynchronous multiplayer games: it's suitable not just for playing with friends, but with random opponents. It gives the game a sense of purpose that other games with random matchmaking do not, as advancing up the ladder serves as a tangible goal.

Outwitters is an incredibly fantastic game. It can be stressful because of having multiple games to keep track of, and keeping strategies straight with multiple games is often a challenge! Otherwise, it's fun to play, has a great free-to-play scheme with the ability to just pay $2.99 for all content now and in the future, and the game just has character. Everything, even the error messages, show the kind of humorous voice that One Man Left has become known for, and it's great. This game is a must-download.