ICBM: Escalation

About

ICBM: Escalation is a single player and multiplayer strategy game. It was developed by SoftWarWare and was released on November 21, 2024. It received positive reviews from players.

ICBM: Escalation is a grand strategy RTS where players command powerful factions in a volatile global conflict. Utilize advanced technology, conventional armies, and devastating nuclear weapons to dominate the battlefield. Victory requires strategic planning, balancing nuclear and conventional warfare to ensure your faction's survival and supremacy.

Genres & Tags

Strategy

Play Modes

Skip User Reviews

90%

Audience ScoreBased on 822 reviews

gameplay18 positive mentions

replayability6 negative mentions

ICBM: Escalation is a significant improvement over its predecessor, offering a deeper strategy experience with the addition of conventional warfare and a more extensive tech tree.
The game provides a variety of gameplay modes, including a fun campaign that spans historical and future conflicts, allowing for different strategies and play styles.
Multiplayer is highly enjoyable, especially with friends, as it encourages alliances, betrayals, and dynamic interactions that enhance the overall experience.

The AI can be overly simplistic and passive, often failing to engage in meaningful conflict or diplomacy, which can diminish the challenge in single-player modes.
There are frequent performance issues and bugs, particularly in multiplayer, which can lead to crashes and disrupt gameplay.
The user interface can be clunky and unintuitive, making it difficult for new players to navigate and fully understand the game's mechanics.

gameplay
54 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
61%
6%
The gameplay of the game is praised for its depth, strategic elements, and variety of mechanics, offering a mix of real-time strategy and political simulation that enhances replayability. While the learning curve can be steep and some mechanics may feel basic or unbalanced, the overall experience is engaging, especially in multiplayer settings with friends. However, issues like a poor user interface and optimization concerns have been noted, indicating room for improvement in future updates.
- “As tensions rise, the gameplay shifts into a terrifying race: who launches first, who retaliates more effectively, and who can maintain enough of a surviving arsenal to ensure a devastating counterstrike.”
- “The game is easy to learn in its gameplay mechanics and design while very, very difficult to master.”
- “The variety of units, munitions, installations, and a great research tree add massively to the gameplay, and I'd highly recommend it to any what-if scenario Cold War fans.”
- “The UI is still pretty bad, and some gameplay decisions are very strange (why do I need to select the air transport plane that I just sent to tell it to drop the army division instead of it doing it by default? Adds micro for zero good reason).”
- “There are no interesting mechanics with nukes; the world pollution mechanic, while realistic and maybe could've been interesting, really just hinders what everyone wants to do.”
- “The previously mentioned unique concepts in this nuke game, as opposed to similar games in the genre, are extremely basic.”
story
42 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
21%
72%
7%
The game's campaign story is a mixed bag, with some players praising its engaging narrative and strategic depth, while others criticize the poorly designed missions and unclear objectives that can lead to frustrating failures. Although the campaign introduces new mechanics and follows a semi-historical timeline, many users found certain missions excessively difficult or poorly balanced, detracting from the overall experience. Despite these issues, the campaign offers a significant amount of content and potential for strategic gameplay, making it enjoyable for those willing to navigate its challenges.
- “Amazing the way they crafted the single player campaign to both follow a semi-historical timeline and with each mission introduce a new mechanic to ease you into all aspects of the game by the end.”
- “Excellent strategy game, with an engaging campaign that greatly enhances the value over just 'instant battle' missions.”
- “Fun campaign with 10+ hours of missions to do and master.”
- “I cannot emphasize just how poorly thought out the campaign is; you get missions where you can suddenly fail and have no idea what actually triggered the failure.”
- “The campaign missions are a lesson in bad game design.”
- “End of story, it just plain sucks.”
graphics
22 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
23%
63%
14%
The graphics of the game have received mixed reviews, with some praising the unique artwork and improved visuals compared to its predecessor, while others criticize the overall quality as basic and poorly optimized. The stripped-down style effectively emphasizes the game's themes, but many players feel that enhanced graphics could elevate its appeal. Overall, while the visuals are functional and contribute to the game's atmosphere, they may not satisfy those looking for high-end graphics.
- “While its presentation may not appeal to those seeking flashier visuals, the stripped-down style ensures that the focus remains on the terrifying logic of nuclear war.”
- “Devs use the best possible approach to make a sequel of their game: grabbed all the cool stuff modders do, enhanced graphics, added campaign mode, and polished all this with an amazing soundtrack.”
- “The graphics are better and there are many quality of life upgrades, some of which are more subtle yet still create an objectively better play experience.”
- “If this game had premium graphics it would be much more famous.”
- “They're garbage, and while I am a firm believer that graphics should never make or break a game, they don't feel good at all.”
- “This game is incredibly poorly optimized, especially considering its minimal graphics.”
optimization
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
60%
20%
The game's optimization is a mixed bag; while the singleplayer campaign runs smoothly, multiplayer skirmishes can severely impact performance, even on decent hardware. Many players report significant stuttering, crashes, and high resource usage, indicating that the game is poorly optimized overall. However, some users note improvements since the beta and express hope for further optimizations and bug fixes.
- “Fun, challenging, and runs smoothly in single player.”
- “Within several days they fixed the bug that caused any performance issues, great customer service in this regard!”
- “They've really optimized the game since beta since I didn't have any issues with performance!”
- “While my machine is not top of the line, this game has no right to be as performance-hungry as it is.”
- “It's a great game but poorly optimized.”
- “So far the game looks very fun but I've played for a solid hour or two now and it's ground itself to an almost unplayable state with constant stuttering, randomly flinging me around the map, eating up like 89% of my available RAM, and then crashing halfway into a war with Mexico.”
replayability
19 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
21%
47%
32%
Overall, the game's replayability is a mixed bag; while many players appreciate the fast-paced gameplay, strategic depth, and modding options that enhance replay value, others criticize the poor AI and repetitive solo experiences that significantly limit replayability. Multiplayer modes tend to offer more variety, but the lack of engaging single-player content and predictable AI behavior detracts from the overall experience. Achievements and different starting nations can provide some incentive for replay, but many players feel that the game falls short in this aspect.
- “The pacing ensures that a single game can be completed in under an hour, making it highly replayable.”
- “It’s chilling, thought-provoking, and endlessly replayable—an RTS that thrives on the razor’s edge of human survival.”
- “Offers a good challenge and modding ability opens up replay value.”
- “It's extremely boring solo; there's little to no replayability as it's almost exactly the same each time, except you're a different color or in a different location.”
- “This is great for a fair multiplayer match, but outside of multiplayer, this harshly limits replayability since the AI is so bad that every single player skirmish will inevitably feel identical to the last.”
- “After playing just one and a half games, there is no replayability because the AI just randomly nukes cities, so all games feel the same.”
music
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
20%
30%
The game's music has received high praise for its fantastic rock and metal soundtrack, which enhances the overall experience, especially during intense moments like nuclear launches. However, some players express a desire for a more varied soundtrack that reflects different tech eras and themes, such as the somber tones of nuclear war. Overall, while the soundtrack is enjoyable and well-integrated, there are suggestions for further thematic depth.
- “The fantastic rock and metal soundtrack is also exceptional.”
- “The soundtrack is also incredibly fitting.”
- “At least the in-game music is super enjoyable while I'm getting nuked by everything.”
- “I would love a soundtrack that captures the depressing horror of nuclear war after the initial waves of nukes have been fired.”
- “Think of a soundtrack similar to that of Call of Duty: World at War.”
- “The music ramps up whenever you launch your nukes.”
stability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Overall, the stability of the game has received mixed reviews, with many users reporting significant bugs, launcher issues, and performance problems that hinder gameplay. While some players find the game enjoyable despite these issues, others express frustration over the lack of updates and poor communication from the developers. The consensus suggests that the game may not be ready for release and requires further refinement before it can be considered stable.
- “Launcher freezes and the game won't start... this should be removed from the Steam store until the bugs are worked out and the game is actually playable.”
- “Great game and really fun with friends, but it's buggy as hell and still worth the money.”
- “You are indie developers - you are not Unity, you are not Unreal, you are not engine developers, so don't act like one - for the sake of your players who are paying 50% of triple-A price for a game that is buggy, laggy, lacks updates, and has poor communication with their player base.”
humor
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is widely praised, with players finding the campaign to be absolutely hilarious, particularly noting the comedic elements surrounding explosive scenarios involving civilian centers.
- “Very funny campaign”
- “Absolutely hilarious”
atmosphere
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33%
67%
The atmosphere in the game is highly praised for its immersive and impactful design, particularly in how it conveys power during naval builds and nuclear launches. Reviewers highlight the harrowing sound design as a key element that enhances the overall experience, contributing to a unique and intense ambiance.
- “I like how it feels atmospherically; when building a giant navy, it really projects your power, or when launching a large salvo of nukes, it has a nice feeling.”
- “What made Defcon so special was its harrowing atmosphere, especially in sound design.”
- “The dreaded red UGC beanie has been donned by an eschaton game-master only once before, and that was over three years ago, when human input error on end stat tallies of aggregate sufddir during a three-way sacpop free-for-all yielded an apparent ignition of the earth’s atmosphere.”
grinding
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players appreciate the reduction of tedious management in anti-missile defense systems, which streamlines gameplay. However, there is a desire for options to disable certain features, like divisions and ground war, as they can slow down the experience and contribute to a sense of grinding.
- “There should be an option to disable divisions/ground war, as these often make the game slow and tedious.”
emotional
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Users appreciate the emotional depth of the game but feel it could benefit from incorporating more wholesome elements to enhance the overall experience.