Wargroove PC review: cute and chunky turn-based strategy, but no advance over the past

There’s a cabal of evil geniuses working at Chucklefish. As the developer of Starbound, the studio gobbled up the fans of creatively-minded survival that Minecraft and Terraria had created, swallowing Steam’s playerbase for the duration of Christmas 2013. Then, as the publisher of Stardew Valley, it tended the land Harvest Moon had left barren - bringing serene countryside escape to PC, and claiming an eager audience in the process. In short, Chucklefish has become the master of the surprise Steam takeover. Its next trick? Turns out the generation weaned on Advance Wars has long since reached adulthood, and the series itself came to a halt a decade ago - long enough that the drip of nostalgia has become a well, deep enough for Chucklefish to stick a great big bucket into. That’s Wargroove - a game that unapologetically, lovingly, recreates the formula of the handheld queen of turn-based strategy. As if that wasn’t shrewd enough, the team is using dogs against us, tapping into gaming Twitter’s weakness for the cute and fluffy. As well as humans, vampires, and great walking trees, Wargroove armies field battlepups, the most prominent of which is the golden retriever and sometime general Caesar. During skirmishes, Caesar barks orders to his crossbowmen before rolling onto his back, showing off the custom armour fitted adorably to his upturned tummy. It’s pure, calculated evil, and I’d be dead against it if it wasn’t making me really quite happy.