As 2025 nears its end, we’ve once again assembled to celebrate the year’s best real-time strategy games.
When it comes to large releases, this subset of strategy video games hasn’t seen as much movement this year as the turn-based and tactical subgenres, especially if you take out of the equation games that simply exited lengthy early access runs. Regardless, small and mid-sized studios have tried hard to bring exciting refreshes of old formulas to the table.
With this six-entry unranked list, we aim to highlight their more unique achievements and briefly celebrate what they’ve brought to the table before 2026 rolls in.
Farthest Frontier
After slowly making its way to a 1.0 release while wowing fans of casual city builders and more demanding management sim enjoyers, Farthest Frontier has blossomed into one of 2025’s loveliest real-time strategy games. Combat isn’t common in this complex town sim that’s all about growing a small community into something bigger, but expect some trouble to come your way too if you don’t take the Pacifist route.
In any case, Farthest Frontier can be a challenge once all its systems and mechanics are stacked on top of each other. With growth come new challenges, and when both diseases and the environmental conditions conspire against you, this one can quickly go from “idyllic to brutal.” Regardless of how you choose to play it, chances are this one will absorb your free time.
Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition
One of this year’s biggest surprises was the highly polished and absolutely packed refresh of Stronghold Crusader, a king among RTS classics. Its Definitive Edition really impressed us back in summer, and all these months later, we still believe it’s one of 2025’s very best strategy releases.
Stronghold Crusader’s main appeal still comes from it being a no-nonsense RTS game that’s easy to pick up and hard to master, and Firefly Studios clearly understood that, giving veterans and newcomers alike plenty of different modes to enjoy the classic and tailor the overall experience to their liking. Moreover, the hardcore crowd has demanding single-player and co-op trails that should keep them busy for weeks (if not months). Firefly aims to keep expanding it for the foreseeable, and we couldn’t be happier this remaster turned out excellent.
Tempest Rising
If we had to pick a single brand-new RTS to celebrate at the end of 2025, that’d be Tempest Rising, since it’s the very rare sort of modern take on the Command & Conquer formula that isn’t overly nostalgic and actually has the resources and fresh ideas behind it to chart a new exciting path forward.
Slipgate Ironworks clearly had a grip on what it wanted to do (and teach) with this cutting-edge but old-fashioned all-out warfare strategy classic. The campaign is excellent, both visuals and audio impress, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is easy to understand but the right amount of rewarding once you really start picking each faction apart. With more on the way next year, make this one your go-to modern RTS and you won’t be disappointed.
Cataclismo
Digital Sun’s Cataclismo has flown under many radars since its early access launch last year. Even back then, its meaty campaign mode was impressive and had a unique pitch, and the full release delivers on almost all its promise. Additionally, those who’d rather focus on wave-based survival and building huge structures which can stand the onslaught of horrors will find plenty to chew on.
Though the basic pitch is quite simple (building brick-by-brick fortresses to stand against post-apocalyptic horrors), it’s clear the developers at Digital Sun had a very specific vision for it, and both the audiovisual presentation and the immediately rewarding and flexible gameplay loop feel unique from the get-go. If you’re looking for something slightly more off-beat, don’t skip this one.
Broken Arrow
Though many might be surprised by Broken Arrow’s presence on this list following a bumpy launch period and the promise of adding crucial features to the game at a later date, we still believe it’s one of the more impressive RTS releases of 2025, warts and all. Wargames have struggled to truly break the mold in recent times, and while Broke Arrow doesn’t rewrite the book for the subgenre, it’s come out loudly swinging and delivering highly detailed modern warfare that’s rewarding to figure out offline or online.
At the time of writing, we’re just hoping Slitherine and Steel Balalaika can better feed the diehards and polish the game’s rough edges, as what’s already in there is impressive when it works as intended. Simply put, it’s one of the more ambitious strategy games we’ve played in recent times, and sometimes you just know certain titles have the juice and just need more time to reach their full potential.
Whiskerwood
Closing this list, we’re circling back to another town sim and relaxed RTS: Whiskerwood, which is yet another winner (in early access for now) from publisher Hooded Horse. Even if mice are at the center of this one, don’t let the cute and cozy vibes fool you: It’s quite brutal out there across the sea. Those greedy cats are a dangerous!
Whiskerwood is all about building a thriving community in the middle of nowhere, and while you can customize the difficulty quite a bit even at this stage, it’s one of the more stressful takes on town sims we’ve played recently. Sometimes, we’d rather just ride into battle than rush to meet absurd demands and paying ever-increasing taxes. On-point cartoony visuals and deceitfully comfycore vibes though. If its very paradoxical style sounds appealing to you, you’ll fall in love with this tale of little rodents trying their best to survive and escape a rigged system (sounds familiar?).
For the latest gaming news, follow GameWatcher on BlueSky, check out our videos on YouTube. We sometimes include affiliate links in our posts, which grants us a small commission, thank you. Please support independent Games Media. ❤️
