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Black Myth Wukong continues to dominate Steam. The action RPG is already second to just PUBG on the Valve platform – an impressive feat for a single-player title. Developer Game Science has nothing short of a gargantuan hit on its hands, but it’s far from the studio’s first release. Before Black Myth Wukong, Game Science helmed two mobile games, and one of them has been sitting on Steam as a free download since 2017.
This is Art of War: Red Tides. A mobile port of Game Science’s last release before Black Myth Wukong, it’s an RTS MOBA hybrid with a focus on multiplayer matches. I took it for a spin myself, and while you can easily tell it’s a PC port of a mobile game, it’s nonetheless a delightful curio representing what Game Science was making before the Steam megahit.
You need to select between hundreds of unlockable units and then send them into glorious battle. Your opponent also has their own arsenal, alongside turrets and defenses you’ll need to conquer. It’s a simple and breezy strategy game, with a collection of single-player challenges and multiplayer modes to try – I actually found a match pretty quickly, likely with someone on mobile, too.
If it sounds a touch like StarCraft, Game Science even pulls direct inspiration from the Desert Strike map on the game’s Steam page, saying “Without the enlightenment of the Desert Strike, Art of War: Red Tides could never be possible.”
So, where did this change to premium games, and Black Myth Wukong, come from? Well, Game Science head of game development Lan Weiyi already has an answer.
“At the time, there were already more than one million Chinese gamers playing Grand Theft Auto on Steam,” Lan wrote on Chinese platform Zhihu (via a South China Morning Post article). “Then we realized that China’s premium games market was going through a transformation.”
From here the team worked with Hero Games as co-publisher for Black Myth Wukong, as the team wanted to expand into something much bigger.
You can download and play Art of War: Red Tides on Steam right here, as it doesn’t look like the mobile version is available in the West.
We’ve got even more for you in the meantime, like all the best free Steam games to add to your backlog, alongside the biggest upcoming PC games you need to watch out for. Or you can check out our 8/10 Black Myth Wukong review instead.
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