I want to play this some more before reviewing formally, but so far, this game is fascinating and a blast to play. Some thoughts so far:

Mechabellum is an autobattler game that sees you building mech armies to take down your opponents'. There are a handful of modes, including 1v1s, 2v2s, 4 player FFA, challenge scenarios, and a survival mode - plus the ability to play against the AI. It seems that 1v1s are the main competitive mode of the game, so that's what most of my review will be focused on.

The first thing to mention is that this game is incredibly complex, and often very punishing too. Mechabellum takes a lot of inspiration from a mix of traditional autobattler games (DOTA Auto Chess, Teamfight Tactics) in its structure. Each round, you get money to spend, and you can use it to buy more units, army-wide upgrades, unit specific upgrades, consumables, etc. The tricky thing is that units generally can't be moved in future rounds after you play them, so you need to carefully consider positioning every single round - you can dump a massive flood of infantry directly on the frontline, but next round, your opponent may just put a single flamethrower tank unit to wipe them out, which brings me to the second main gameplay mechanic.

Every unit in Mechabellum has some set of mechanical gameplay mechanics that make them stronger or weaker against different units. Crawlers are incredibly effective against units that only have single target damage, but are annihilated by splash damage or flamethrowers. Artillery units pack a terrific punch, but if you don't have any anti-air units, they'll be helpless against flyers like Wasps or Phoenixes.

The unit upgrade system drives an even more massive amount of depth that requires careful thought and countering. The Fortress units normally can't hit air units, but they have access to a deadly anti-air missile upgrade that makes them effective against flyers. However, you could counteract this by getting tank units that have the anti-missile interceptor upgrade that helps block missiles. But, your opponent could demolish your tanks with a series of Steel Balls that can easily eat through tank armor, and so on and on and on.

In addition to this, each* unit has four upgrades available for them in game, but you get to pick which four upgrades those are as a part of your loadout. It may be tempting to run a ton of the Fortress upgrades that make them incredibly tanky, but giving up the easy anti-air access may be a mistake! You also can see your opponents current and potential unit upgrades, so there usually aren't any cheap surprises.

*Okay, the massive War Factory has access to six, shush.

The hard part about Mechabellum is exactly this - there are a massive number of strategies to employ, and the only way you're going to learn how to be successful is to learn them bit by bit, and treating every single loss (whether a single round or whole game) as a learning experience. Got rolled by the classic Arclight & Marksman combo? Try out some Fortresses or some shielded wasps. Opponent drops an early Melting Point? Drop a bunch of Steel Balls, or units with EMP rounds to disable their incredibly expensive upgrades. But, unfortunately, you will lose a good couple of games where you just don't know the right counter to a given strategy, and it can be frustrating. Google, reddit, and the Steam forums are definitely your friend here.

Pricing wise, Mechabellum runs $15USD, though it's gone on sale for less. One thing to note is that the developer, Game River, fully intends this to be a live service game, so there are still optional skins and cosmetics you can buy. Thankfully, none of the actual UNITS are gated by microtransactions, and I hope it remains that way. For the low price and the live service nature of the game, I'm fine with this, especially given that the devs have already released new units and made plenty of balance changes since release.

The last thing to note is the game population. This is a competitive indie game, and it only just launched its 1.0 in September of 2024, so it's generally on the smaller size. The queue times aren't too bad - usually less than a minute, and sometimes are instant, but there's only been about 15-30 people in queue on the English server when I've been on. Steam charts usually say about 1500-3000 people in game most days, too. It hasn't discouraged me, though, and I'll imagine I'll continue to play for a good while. The autobattler formula is just one that I can't help but love.

So far, this is a recommend from me!