I'm going to try and keep this short as my kids don't have sports tonight, my rare night off during the week
I played Mech Armada over the past couple weekends. It ended up being a fairly short game, I beat it in 15-18 hours, but I also got it on sale for like...$5 and it's normally just $20. It was basically all programmed by one guy with a handful of people helping with the art and sound. It plays very much like a chess match with a 2D isometric board, except instead of using chess pieces you have Mechs that you build to fight against bugs, monsters, and mutant type creatures.
As you complete (Or fail) runs you get access to more parts to start a new run. You also collect Meta points which you use for additional resources on runs, like starting with more energy, or getting more research credits per battle. Before a run you can setup what starting parts/mechs you have available to you via a list, and as you go through each run you'll research available tech and build more mechs as you go. If you fail you restart from scratch, however you keep any Meta points you acquire and any parts you unlock can be researched again on a fresh run. There's a partial RNG element as you randomly get to choose between two parts each time to research, so every run is a little different and there's Challenges available if you find things are too easy.
There's a lot of customizations available to you, and there's plenty of winning strategies you can go for. You can play keep away, which is what I did a lot on my early runs. I took highly mobile mechs that allowed for extra movement after completing actions (With many mech "legs" you typically can't move after an action is done, but some do allow it). I would move a bit into range, pick off enemies, then move back out of range to avoid taking damage. In later runs I found that I really liked the "Defender" chest, which added Armor to your mech each time it took damage. I paired a few of these Defender mechs with Healing rays, essentially letting them build armor and heal as they got hit over the course of the match. It allowed them to face tank most enemies after just a few rounds. Most strategies have a weakness though, for instance the Defender mechs don't work so well against enemies that get stronger as you kill their buddies. If you leave these type of enemies for the end then no amount of armor can save you.
There's 17 different legs to choose from, 29 torsos, and about 35 weapons to choose from. Torsos can hold anywhere from 1-3 weapons, so there's a ton of possibilities as far as Mech configurations. Some torsos have bonuses, like the ability to fire an extra action after a kill, or an ability that increases all parts by one level on that Mech. The weapons vary from short and long range single target damage types, to AOE attacks, to freeze rays, buff rays, flamethrowers, and more. You're constrained to a max of 6 Mechs per map, but if you have enough energy saved up you can spawn additional Mechs if you lose any. You pickup energy to spawn/adjust Mechs as you win matches, but you can also gain additional energy by controlling energy points during battles. You use your research credits to unlock more parts as you're on a run, or you can use the credits to enhance existing parts you've already unlocked.
There's a very basic story, the meat of this game is definitely the tactical strategy. Once you play through the initial campaign the first time it unlocks a new mode and additional story where you have to reach a warehouse to accomplish a task. Once you get back from the warehouse you play through the campaign once more, although it's a bit tougher and the maps change a bit. For the price this is a nice Turn Based Tactical game. It's fun playing around with different builds and trying to think ahead on how to counter the enemy.
