In the world of sequel tropes, the wild west is an oft-ignored setting. More often than not we see a leap to space, or a trip to Manhattan – neither of which possess the same level of romance as the gun-totin' west. Does this mean SQUIDS Wild West, the upcoming sequel to the highly popular SQUIDS, will be the most romantic squid-based game of all time? One can only hope.

First things first: In videogame terms, "4X" does not mean "four times" but literally four Xes - explore, expand, exploit and exterminate - and is used to describe massive, sweeping strategy epics. The upcoming Empire of the Eclipse looks poised to bring that sort of heavyweight gameplay experience to iOS hardware, putting players in charge of a fledgling empire as it takes its first steps into the stars.

To put it bluntly, there's not much meat on the DragonCraft strategy bone. It's a pretty game, and at first glance it looks like there's a lot to do here, but it doesn't take long to realize that you're not the one giving the orders, you're following them.

The best thing I can say about The Last Stand: Dead Zone is that I was playing it at the very moment of Diablo III's long-anticipated release and found myself reluctant to stop. That's partly because there wasn't much point to trying to log in to Diablobecause of the server load, but also because ConArtist's fourth entry in their Last Stand series surprised me at every turn. It succeeds as both as a strategy game and a roleplaying game, and it's a gritty example of how to give aging social conventions new relevance. Perhaps most importantly, it's a game for people who doubt the legitimacy of Facebook as a gaming platform.

In some ways you could say Mighty Monsters is a game about reaching a pinnacle. Perhaps the pinnacle. In a way that no one else has. Because while on one hand your challenge is to capture monsters, you also have a deeper calling: to train them. In order to do so, you’ll travel broad expanses in a fervent search - all the while looking for the mystical power both inside the monsters and in yourself. Also, so what if those were just rephrased lyrics of the Pokemon theme song.

The comparisons are inevitable so I’m just gonna go ahead and make the obvious one right at the top: Warlock: Master of the Arcane owes its entire existence to Civilization. There. That’s out of the way. And while the comparison is inevitable and warranted, that doesn’t mean Warlock is some cheap rip-off. On the contrary, it basically takes all the best parts and melds them into a fantasy wasteland where throngs battle each other over land and sea. In a civilized turn-based fashion, of course.

Sometimes a game does nothing wrong, technically speaking, but still comes up wanting. MMO strategy game Illyriad is a prime example - everything from the game's interface to its resource-building is standard free-to-play strategy game fare, none of it too intrusive. The only problem? It focuses so hard on playing it safe, it forgets to deliver something worth playing.

Ever want to take over the world? Actually, that’s a pretty poorly phrased question, because as a human, you’d undoubtedly be going with it. Ever want to destroy the world? In Pandemic 2.5, you fight the invisible war of contagions—attempting to enhance your DNA until the scientists won’t know what hit them.

As if the indie game scene wasn’t already doing well enough for itself, Kickstarter has been bringing even more attention to some little gems-in-the-making seeking crowd-sourced funding. The games are getting more experimental as more and more developers are starting to embrace the freedom that truly independent development grants, them and we gamers are responding with our wallets. City Conquest recently completed its second campaign successfully to bring a new kind of genre-blending strategy game to the mobile space.

Vigrior, according to Wikipedia, is a large field upon which the forces of the Gods and Surtr will do battle at Ragnarok. It's also the name of the galactic sector you'll command in FleetCOMM: Operation Vigrior, an upcoming real-time strategy game in which humanity struggles to defend itself against an alien enemy known as the Virals. Unlike conventional RTSes, however, FleetCOMM will forgo unit building or resource gathering in favor of what strategy games are supposed to be all about: epic military engagements.