I’ve played a lot of strategy games over the years. In fact, if you pinned me down to it, I’d probably tell you that strategy is my favorite genre in the medium. From Chess to StarCraft 2, the idea of formulating a plan, executing it and preparing for the aftermath has held a special kind of narcissistic appeal to me and gamers like me. I can safely, say, however, that I’ve never played a strategy game quite like Frozen Synapse.
Frozen Synapse is a game of consequences, one in which the cognitive distance between commander and grunt plays out in five second intervals. The game bills itself as turn-based strategy, but you’d do best to forget everything you learned playing Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics or Civilization. While you can take your time planning out your moves before ending your turn, your plans don’t immediately execute.
They execute at the exact same time as your opponent’s.
This changes turn-based game play in some surprising ways. In a game of Frozen Synapse, as in a game of Chess, players receive perfect information about units positions at the beginning of each turn. Players then attempt to predict a number of possible future scenarios based on the current board position and then move their pieces accordingly. In most turn-based strategy games, the second part is happening in staggered order, one player at a time. Every other turn, a player is simply observing and analyzing. But what happens when both players are acting on the current board position at the same time? Imagine moving your bishop to take your opponent’s queen, but in this game your foe can try to sneak his queen out of your bishop’s attack range while you’re moving your piece toward her.
If this is starting to sound like an RTS, remember that the player is committing his troops to five seconds of action; I won’t be able to kite my opponent’s shotgunners with my assault rifle boys in real time. I’ll only be able to sit and watch helplessly as my dudes prance merrily into a spray of deadly buckshot. If they’re still alive after that time, I’ll do my best to account for the new situation on the ground. Of course, my opponent will be doing the same.
The lethality of unit interactions makes battles in Frozen Synapse short and brutal. Rather than using a hit point system, Frozen Synapse takes into account, range, cover, directional aiming and stillness–a stationary unit can fire more accurately than a moving unit. If your unit is hit, that’s it, he’s dead. You made a tactical error and someone died. Given all the elements in play, these errors will be common.
It’s this feeling of helplessness that seems almost unique to Frozen Synapse, lingering long after the player has overcome the game’s titanic learning curve. Frozen Synapse gives you the option to see a simulation of your orders before you lock in the commands. While useful, it doesn’t take into account your opponent’s orders, luring you into a false sense of confidence. Chances are that a clean kill in the simulation won’t play out as well in reality.
That the action feels so harrowing despite the game’s minimalistic, retro graphics is a testament to the strength of the game’s concept (and its excellent sound design). The game’s fiction and campaign are dense sci-fi/cyberpunk, but you could as well be a modern intelligence officer relaying spy satellite information to a special ops team.
Frozen Synapse drives home the idea that a representative model one sees from afar can differ greatly from the reality on the ground. It’s a niche game within a niche sub-genre, but it has far more to say about contemporary combat than most of today’s AAA shooters.
