How Troopstorm works

The setting

Twenty years ago a rain of meteorites hit the continent of Varkan. Out of the craters came Aurium, a crystal that gives almost endless energy. The old countries fell apart, and the continent broke into territories held by rival armies, each fighting for every deposit.

You command the Free Legion: what is left of the old armies, volunteers and mercenaries who want Aurium to belong to everyone. Against you stands the Iron Dominion of General Kragov, a disciplined army that wants all of the crystal for itself. Both sides field the same troops: the Legion in olive green with orange bands, the Dominion in steel blue with red.

The loop

Your base is home. Every battle starts from it and comes back to it. Battles pay dollars and Intel; with them you raise your buildings, research troops and technologies and train your troops in the barracks; a stronger base and better troops open harder bases on the map and more stars to win. Your commander level grows with experience from every fight and unlocks troops and cards along the way.

The battles

• Attack a base. On the war map you pick another commander's base. Skulls tell you how hard it is; the panel shows its defense, its garrison and the dollars to win. You choose up to six kinds of troops and a deck of cards, the convoy drives to the front, and you send your soldiers by hand, paying supplies for each. Destroy the headquarters to win; destroy every building before it for three stars.
• Survival. The siege: your base is attacked wave after wave, without end and ever harder. Twenty waves are written by hand, the rest follow a formula, and from wave 20 the Dominion sends its best troops under captains who rise in rank. Hold twenty waves and you earn dollars, once a day. Your best runs go on the leaderboard.
• Defend the base. Your base fights on its own: the barracks sends every troop it opens, each holding its post or attacking as you set it, and the headquarters sends scouts. You play the commander cards, which you earn from the enemies that fall. Weather and the hour of the day change the fight.
• Duel. In the Online world, a friendly fight between two friends, base against base, on a field that stretches between them. Eight minutes, with a score of wins, losses and draws.
• Live defense. When another commander attacks your base while you are in the game, an alarm rings. You can join the defense live, as it happens, with the cards and the crates of a defender. General attack sends your whole garrison forward, those still coming too; press it again to call them back.
• Surprise attacks. Once a day the Dominion may strike your base on its own. Answer the alarm, or let the base fight alone.

The troops

Eleven kinds, researched at the research center and trained in one barracks. Its level opens each kind, and you raise each troop in it up to level 5 (6 with Training), for dollars and Intel: +8% health and +6% damage a level, in attack and in defense. Up to six kinds come along on an attack.

• Rifleman (barracks 1): cheap, good in numbers, comes in a squad of four.
• Machine gunner (1): slow and hard to stop, holds the line and mows down the groups that come close.
• Sniper (2): fires from far away, lying prone in his ghillie; his bullet goes through a line of soldiers.
• Grenadier (3): grenades from a drum launcher, over walls and sandbags, good against soldiers bunched together.
• RPG soldier (4): strong against vehicles and bunkers; his blast throws soldiers into the air.
• Medic (4): walks with the group and heals the wounded.
• Spotter (5): when the enemy strikes from the sky or its artillery fires, he calls GET DOWN!, and 7 in 10 of his men within 9 m dive aside and take 30% less. He goes with attacks only.
• Special forces (6): three elite fighters with scoped carbines, short bursts, fast on their feet.
• Flamethrower (8): armored, with tanks on his back that burst when he falls; he reaches 14 m, and men on fire run from him.
• Gas trooper (10): a chemist whose poison keeps hurting after the last puff, reaching 15 m; in his suit and mask he does not catch fire.
• Captain: the group's officer, out of the headquarters, one at a time; the troops around him move faster and fight better. He rises with your level: Major at 10, Colonel at 15, General at 20, Veteran at 25.

The barracks goes up to level 15. Its look changes every five levels, from the recruits' camp to the elite barracks; every level sends its troops sooner, and at 10 twice as many of each stand at once, at 15 two and a half times as many. A second barracks comes at headquarters 10, a third at 20.

The commander cards

Cards cost no supplies. On defense you earn them from the enemies you bring down, at most three of a kind; on the attack you bring a deck. The ones that come by plane can be shot down by the enemy's flak gun.

• Rocket barrage: rockets on the spot you point at, breaking towers and bunkers before your troops get there.
• Rally point: a flag where your troops gather, then strike all at once. Plant it behind them and they fall back.
• Medkit: a green cross that heals the soldiers around it.
• Minefield: mines the enemy cannot see.
• Strike Team: paratroopers landed over walls, good against a maze base.
• Focus fire: every troop shoots at the building you point at.
• Heavy bomb: one big bomb from the air.
• Air strike: a plane's pass along a line of fire.
• Smoke grenade: your nearest soldier throws it, up to 18 m from him; a screen of smoke for ten seconds, and nobody aims through it but the watchtower's sniper.
• Mobilize: in duels, a rally point for your whole army, garrison included, then one attack all at once.

The base

You place every building yourself, anywhere in your half of the field, turned as you like. Walls snap end to end; the enemy walks around them by any open path, however long, and breaks through the weakest one only if you close the base off completely.

• Headquarters: its level sets your build points; it sends scouts and the captain, and holds the tech tree.
• Barracks: one for every troop, on 3×3 with two doors in front, up to three of them.
• Research center: researches the troops and their looks, and makes Intel every hour, 10 to 120 by its level.
• Walls: wood at first, stone from level 5, concrete from 10, armored at 15. Plus sandbags, barbed wire and the Czech hedgehog.
• Bunker and Watchtower: they fire in front of them; the tower fires over walls.
• Flak gun: shoots down the rockets and planes sent into its zone.
• Artillery: a howitzer, a battery of mortars or a rocket launcher, switched for dollars.
• Decorations: lamps, poles and generators from the shop, for the look of it. A season dresses the whole base: winter, autumn, spring or desert.

Buildings take build points; upgrades take dollars, and Intel from level 3. Tear down an upgraded building and every dollar and all the Intel put into it come back.

The tech tree

At the headquarters, under TECHNOLOGIES: fifteen technologies in a hexagonal network you drag, scroll and zoom, the headquarters in the middle. Each is researched once, with Intel and dollars, and works for good. The first of each branch can be researched at once; each of the others comes after one before it, and asks a commander level, a headquarters level or a barracks level. The tree opens once you build the research center.

• Economy: Accounting (+10% dollars from battles), Archives (+20% Intel an hour), Vault (12 hours of Intel held instead of 8), Merchants (the gold exchanges give 10% more), Drilling (prepares the oil of the next phase).
• Army: Field depot (+10 supply at the start of an attack), Recruiting (a second barracks from headquarters 7), Smoke fighting (100% damage in your own smoke), Supply lines (supply 10% faster), Training (troops to level 6).
• Defense: Reinforced sandbags (+15% health), Armored walls (+10% health), Quick garrison (the barracks' troops out 10% sooner), Quick flak (anti-aircraft reloads 15% faster), Tall towers (watchtowers reach 1 m farther).

On the tree, gold means researched, steel ready to research and iron locked. At the end of each branch waits a doctrine of headquarters 25, coming later: Logistics, Assault and Fortification.

The commander's road

Experience from battle raises your commander level, up to 50, through eleven ranks from Lieutenant to Legend of the Front. Each level unlocks troops, cards or build points and pays Intel, 5 times the level; past level 20 every level pays dollars too. The road also shows the captain's promotions where they open: Major at 10, Colonel at 15, General at 20, the Veteran at 25.

Dollars, Intel and gold

• Dollars come from battles: the win and its stars, enemies brought down, crates, the siege's daily pay. They pay for buildings, upgrades, research, troop levels and technologies.
• Intel is the research resource. The research center makes it every hour and holds up to 8 hours of it; battles pay it (10 for a win and 5 a star, 10 for a defense held, 5 every 5 siege waves), and so do daily missions and every level on the road. Research, building upgrades from level 3, troop levels and technologies take it.
• Gold is the rare one: daily missions, new stars on the map, siege records, ranks, medals, and a 5-gold shard after some Online wins. It buys the looks (a season for 300, all four for 900, the Ghost Legion for 1,200), Intel in the shop (60 for 10 gold, 200 for 30), a boost before an attack and the rarest research. Aurium, which it replaced in 2.28.0, is again only the crystal of the story.

The Online world

The game starts with a world on your device. The Online world is tied to an account, a name and a password, nothing more: your base, your money and your battles live on the server, so the same commander can play from any PC.

• Other commanders attack your base while you are away, and you attack theirs. Every battle that pays is replayed and checked on the server, so the result is the one that really happened.
• Leaderboards with trophies, leagues and seasons; the siege's records; your career.
• Friends, duels and an inbox for messages and gifts from the studio. There is no chat between players.
• Up to four separate worlds on one device, one of them the Online one.

Day, night and weather

Day and night follow the real clock. After dark a battle is fought at night and your base stands in the dark with its lamps lit; the sun rises and sets as it does in Romania, later in winter. The night deepens until midnight, stays darkest until five, then pales toward sunrise. A battle you start keeps your PC's hour; raids, sieges and duels set by the server keep Bucharest's.

The weather changes the battle's numbers, not only its look:

• Clear: full speed and range. The sun follows your clock, low and warm in the morning, high at noon, golden from the side at sunset, with long shadows; the clouds' shadows drift over the field.
• Rain: infantry 15% slower, vehicles 30%. It grows as the battle goes on and slants in the wind: the ground darkens, puddles fill the ruts, and in a storm lightning strikes where you look, with real thunder.
• Fog: snipers and long guns lose 40% of their range, every other gun 10%.
• Snow: everyone 10% slower; snipers and long guns lose 20% of their range, the rest 5%.
• Night: nobody fires farther than 24 m, and enemies far from your soldiers and buildings show only as red silhouettes.

Where your base stands decides how often each comes: the Varkan Plains are mostly clear, the Eastern Marshes rain in half the battles, the Valley of Mists is foggy in half, and in the Frozen North it snows more often than not and never rains.

The controls

On a phone the same game will be played with one finger to move the camera, two to zoom, a tap to place and a long press for the names.

On your PC

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. About 114 MB to download, about 300 MB installed.
• Any graphics card or chip from the last ten years. Three quality levels, chosen on the first start: low for weak machines, medium for most laptops, high for the full look.
• English and Romanian, switched in Settings → Game → Language.
• The game saves as you play and updates itself.

Download for PC