Advance Wars is one of my favorite games of all time. Nakazawa Tech, the indie studio I founded, is aiming at recreating games that I loved playing as a kid, and building on top of them with twists and novel ideas.

Check out Wargroove if you like this sort of game

I didn't enjoy Wargroove, which is one reason I'm building Athena Crisis.

Do you want to elaborate on why Athena Crisis is better than Wargroove in your opinion?

I don't know if it is objectively better but I like it better.

It does, and it's a very good game, but this feels like plagiarism with how similar it is -- artwork style, mechanics, even UI is essentially identical to the GBA games

> It does, and it's a very good game, but this feels like plagiarism with how similar it is -- artwork style, mechanics, even UI is essentially identical to the GBA games

"Plagiarism" does not mean what you think it means.

I encourage you to check out both games side by side before making incorrect statements like these.

I think plagiarism is a bit far, but I definitely understand why others think your game is extremely derivative of Advance Wars. Could you elaborate on what makes your game special?

It expands on the formula with new units, buildings and gameplay elements like you’d expect from a new entry 20 years later. It also doesn’t take itself too seriously.

You can play on any device at any time, in sync or async games and interact with other players.

It comes with the exact same map and campaign editors we are using to build the game. You can collaborate with friends on a campaign and share them with anyone.

It has no load times.

I think thats also known as a genre

Yeah, it’s really common for indie games to be derivative of big name games. Examples:

Wargroove (advanced wars)

Stardew Valley (harvest moon)

Etc. Wargroove isn’t really even “indie” as Chucklefish is a very established studio.

So, yeah… this is normal and not worthy of criticism.

A genre containing only one game series from one company? :P

There are probably 100s of this style of game... and from many companies. I'm not exaggerating. Many before "advance wars", too.

The earliest one I've played was Operation Combat on the Amiga in 1991.

https://youtu.be/uC845vxdyuY

Hadn't heard of it --cool. Along the same lines, Eastern Front[0] was a turn based tactical game about 10 years earlier. I played it in the early 90s on an Atari. The OPs game and advance wars have much more in common, but certainly the derivation goes back a long way. Later on, Japan had a lot of these turn based tacticals that didn't make it to western markets. (Super Robot Wars is a series that had some titles sold in English but not most.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(1941)

If there are so many, can you show one example at least?