Free Lances: Blood for Profit

War is good for business

The Queen and the Duke both want the crown, and neither has the men to take it. You do. Sell your company's swords to either side, plan every fight, then watch it play out. When the war ends, the winner remembers whom you served. Choose well and you retire rich. Choose badly and you hang.

Not your usual autobattler

• A whole war, not a ladder of matches. You choose which contracts to take, which side to serve and which road to march.

• Real places, not arenas. Storm castles, burn towns, ambush carts at the mill, hold the bridge. Each one can be won more than one way, or by dragging their captain out alive for ransom.

• The field remembers. Sieges last days. Come back next morning and your dead still lie where they fell, the houses are ash, and the enemy has new men and a new plan.

• Pick your way in. Up the road to the gate, or half a day round through the woods to the postern.

• Several battles at once. Hire more commanders and fight on opposite ends of the map, each battle in its own tab.

• Keep the company alive. Pay wages or watch men desert. Keep the supply carts running. Beat the snow as it creeps south.

• A new war every time. Every campaign comes from a seed.

It gets ugly

Hundreds of pixel-art soldiers fight across a real 3D battlefield, through rain and snow. Arrows come down in sheets, houses burn, and horsemen ride down the men who run. Blood and gore can be switched off.

Somebody has to do the dying. Make sure you get paid for it.