Sure, Humankind and Total War: Warhammer III are exciting, but there’s plenty going on in the indie strategy scene worth paying attention to as well. Yesterday’s Fragile Existence has me all excited for space RTS games, and now Modern Wolf’s new project, Cantata, is bringing back some Advance Wars feelings I didn’t know I was missing.

If nothing else, Cantata is stylish. Officially the art style is “pastel kaleidoscopic sci-fi”, but whatever you want to call it, it’s distinctive. This is a turn-based strategy game that mixes the tactical combat of games like Advance Wars, with logistics-based base building that you would see in Factorio. The official fact sheet even cites Alpha Centauri and Final Fantasy Tactics as inspirations, among others.

Cantata emphasises characters, and there are nine to choose from, three each for the game’s three factions – the Machines, Humans, and Aliens – with every faction having its own unique unit roster. The base building element will see you placing down different buildings to collect, refine, and then ship resources to other buildings which will take those components and build units from them.

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