Been playing Rebuild 3: Gangs of Deadsville lately.
It's a bit like Fire Emblem set in a zombie apocalypse, but with no visuals of seeing your characters fight the zombies (which sucks). You start each map in a new city with 5 buildings that you've reclaimed and built a wall around - and most or all of the other grid squares (most of which are buildings) have zombies in them. To reclaim another square, you have to kill the zombies in it, and then set someone to reclaim it by extending your wall around it. Consequently you can only reclaim squares adjacent to yours, but you can reclaim as many as you want at a time.
Each action you take requires time - you can set the timescale, but there's no reason not to have it on the fastest setting - usually measured in days. That includes making things, producing food, chopping wood, researching, building new structures or reclaiming them, scouting the map, killing zombies, etc. You can do as many things at the same time as you have survivors to do them, but each square can have only one task being performed on it at a time.
When you start a new game, you create your personal avatar - who is immune to the zombie disease - and you will carry this character to the end of the game. I don't remember the first map well, but you can take up to 3 other survivors from one map to the next. You do not have to take the same 3 survivors each time.
Each survivor you acquire has skills: Defense (fighting ability), Scavenging (affects the speed of scavenging buildings and the rate of food and materials production), Building (affects the speed of reclaiming structures, building new structures, and reinforcing claimed structures), Engineering (affects the rate of producing various items at a Workshop, the rate of researching new tech at a Laboratory, and a number of map-specific events), and Leadership (affects survivor management, and trade and interaction with other factions).
Each survivor requires a place to sleep - so the number you can have depends on the number of residential structures you've claimed - and food. Farms of various kinds produce food passively, with each farm claimed or built increasing the food production depending on its size, but you can increase the food production at a given farm by assigning someone to actively work it. Your survivors can die if they are badly injured enough or run out of food and starve (and the game has permadeath), and you start each map with only 1 farm - not enough to feed 4 characters without someone actively working it - and 50 stored food. You can also acquire food by scavenging.
Each new map begins under the "fog of war" - you only have information about the buildings you've claimed and the ones you've actively scouted, and most of the map cannot be seen at the start. Scouting is generally quick - quicker if you have a high Scavenging skill or certain items equipped - and reveals information about the grid square you've scouted, as well as revealing more of the map. Grid squares can have Food, Materials, recruitable Survivors, zombies, or events - or any combination of these, including all of them. Each thing can be dealt with one at a time - that is, you cannot Scout, Scavenge, Fight AND Recruit all at once, but must do these in sequence. Reclaimed buildings will retain their Scavengable materials and food, so you can have a low Defense scavenger work safely inside your base if you choose. Recruitable squares will sometimes automatically go to the recruitment screen if you reclaim them, but sometimes they won't - its usually best to recruit first, with whoever has your highest Leadership skill. Reclaiming structures consumes Materials - some maps have very limited supplies of materials, so watch out!
Each survivor recruited will have a primary job reflecting their highest skill, and you can reveal the skills of new survivors before recruiting them by holding the cursor over their portrait. The way to understand skill levels is that anything can be done with any skill level, but a higher level of the relevant skill will make it happen faster. So you can have a Soldier with 0 Building reclaim a structure, but it will take a long time. Fortunately you can swap assigned projects without penalty if you do so while the game is paused, so a useful strategy if you have a cleared square and no available Builders is to have your Soldier start the reclaiming - cleared buildings that have not been claimed will eventually refill with zombies.
Clearing structures becomes more dangerous as the number of zombies inside increases. The longer a structure is untouched, the more zombies it will have. Once scouted, it will appear on the map with a color tint attached reflecting how dangerous clearing it will be - the color scale going up the danger level is Green-Yellow-Orange-Red, with gray meaning it's cleared. Survivors with higher defense will clear the square faster, and are less likely to be injured or bitten in the process. More survivors can be tasked with clearing the same structure, reducing the danger level (this can also be done with Scavenging). The further the structure is from your base, the higher the danger level for your survivors (this can be reduced with certain items, skills, and researched tech).
Occasionally a "mass" of zombies will appear in a grid square adjacent to your base - these are dangerous masses of zombies, and they will eventually assault the nearest bit of your base. Placing a survivor on that square reduces the danger that they will successfully overrun that square - potentially to zero if the survivor has a high enough defense (reinforcing that square can reduce the danger further). Several days will pass between the appearance of a mass and the attack, and when the attack commences you will be given some options for how to deal with the attack (provided the danger isn't 0% and there is a survivor in range to defend the space). If the assault succeeds, you will lose that square and have to clear and reclaim it. Each of the options you are given if the danger isn't 0% will have different chances of success - the more costly methods (like using up extra ammunition or sacrificing a weapon) have higher success rates. If the danger is 0%, you lose nothing at all.
There are also Hordes. These are much larger masses that appear at a distance from your base and slowly approach before attacking. Masses and hordes can be attacked directly - attacking a horde stalls its approach, but an attacked mass will still eventually assault your base - but this is much more dangerous than simply defending the nearest square, and requires better equipped and more numerous survivors to accomplish. Hordes are more dangerous to assault than Masses.
The final zombie type is Roamers. These will never assault your base, but they will assault any survivors you send outside of your base to a square near them - most of the time the attack will simply force your survivor to flee, but they can be injured or even bitten during these attacks. Attacking them successfully will remove them from the map, but this is the most dangerous group to attack. Each zombie group is represented by a different icon on the map, making them easy to distinguish.
Each survivor can be equipped with a weapon and an item. All weapons will grant at least +1 to defense - more "weaponlike" items will grant higher bonuses - and the bonus they provide will increase if the equipped survivor has a relevant Perk (Firearms Training gives bonuses to equipped guns and crossbows, for example, whereas Hand to Hand Training requires they not have an equipped weapon to use). Some weapons have bonus effects - hunting rifles and crossbows allow you to hunt on certain squares for bonus food, sledgehammers and chainsaws grant bonuses to the Building skill, and things like baseball bats and golf clubs grant the Recreation Perk, increasing the happiness of that survivor. Equipped items also grant bonuses - these can include chemistry sets for Engineers, backpacks for Scavengers, toolboxes for Builders, and even vehicles that reduce the danger of operating at a distance from your base. Clearing grid squares with a survivor equipped with a firearm will consume ammunition - which can be replenished by trading, scavenging, or in a Workshop - whereas melee weapons do not, but they tend not to grant as high a Defense bonus.
Items also include pets and young children. Pets will grant bonuses of their own - all grant the Pet Owner perk, increasing happiness, but dogs can grant defense bonuses as well (cats grant other bonuses). Children by contrast reduce all of your survivor's skills - as some of their time is taken up looking after the kid - but eventually the kid will grow up (they become usable survivors at age 14), and they will already have a high level of whatever job their guardian had. So, for example, a kid assigned to a Scavenger will start out with a high Scavenging skill when they grow up. Skills can be increased by use, by items, by weapons, and through use of a School grid square. As their skills increase, you will eventually get the option to learn more about that scavenger's life, and each time (it happens 3 times) you will be able to select one of 3-4 Perks for that survivor. These can have stacking effects for their job, their equipped weapons or even other perks, and some are much more useful than others. "Crafter", for example, occasionally grants bonus item production when the survivor is assigned to a Workshop, whereas a Builder with "Artist" will grant bonus happiness to the group when you assign them to reinforce a grid square (the idea being that they make that area aesthetically pleasing). These perks activate mostly at random, but many others are continuous or otherwise controllable.
The skill cap for survivors is base 10 of whatever their primary job is - anything further is dependent on equipment and Perks. Any skill other than their primary one can only be learned very slowly, and too much time spent on it will cause them to change jobs to favor the new skill. Your avatar, however, is special, and can have up to 10 in every skill.
Tech research at Laboratories is key to improving your survivability and preventing a lot of catastrophes. Survivor Management, for example, allows you to learn more about your survivors - gaining their backstory events and perks, and helping to manage their mood - and acquiring this will unlock more tech on your tech tree. The tech tree gains more tiers as you progress through the campaign, unlocking more and more useful tech. The time each tech requires is dependent on the Engineering skill of whoever you assign, items they may be holding (some grant bonuses), their Perks, and the tier of the tech being researched. Occasionally the game will throw you a curveball: a drought, for instance, will dramatically reduce the food production at your farms for as long as it lasts, and this can be countered by having researched Irrigation ahead of time. Some maps will also offer civil amenities - if you reclaim a Water Treatment Plant, for instance, you are guaranteed not to have survivors come down sick with waterborne diseases. Not all maps have these amenities (the maps are randomly generated, and they change if you reset a stage of the campaign), but the later ones tend to have all of them.
The game has lots of random events that will occur, and you can influence these events to one degree or another based on what you've reclaimed, built or unlocked. If a structure catches fire, for instance, you can put it out safely if you've reclaimed a Fire Station or a Water Treatment Plant, but otherwise your only option is to let it burn out - destroying whatever structure was on that grid square, if any. There are also special events that can occur, and these are often story-related.
Each map will have at least one other faction, and can have as many as 6 (I think). They will start out with some claimed squares, and will slowly grow in all viable directions as time passes. You *can* reclaim squares they occupy, but this tends to piss them off - they will start attacking you if you do this, either conducting raids to steal your stuff or sending soldiers to attack your grid squares and potentially injuring or killing any survivors on that square - so if there's anything you really want near them you want to claim it as early as possible. Reclaiming a square adjacent to their base will prompt them to demand you turn it over to them - you can turn them down politely if you have a high enough leadership skill on your main survivor, but otherwise your options are to either agree or give them the finger (which angers them). Each faction has a Defense level, which can be increased or decreased depending on your interactions with them (this affects how dangerous it is to attack them) and a Reputation level, which affects how likely they are to attack you, whether you can trade with them, and whether they are amenable to an alliance. You cannot trade with a faction if your reputation is below 50%, and alliances are only available at 100%.
Most maps require you to either eradicate or ally with all the factions present. Beginning an alliance attempt requires you reclaim enough structures to unlock a City Hall - building that allows you to define the kind of settlement you've built and set ongoing policies. After you've done that, you can then begin seeking the friendship of other factions. If you prefer to eradicate them, you can attack at any time, but usually you cannot leave a map until you've built a City Hall. Each faction has their own missions, and you must wait at least a few in-game days between interactions with a faction. Trading with factions can gain you reputation by offering to pay more in trade than you're getting - they appreciate it when you do that. Any and all of your weapons, items, and resources can be traded. There is also a wandering merchant - Gustav - who will randomly appear on most maps. Trading with him will prompt him to leave, but he will return eventually. Befriending Gustav is potentially very useful, but getting the most out of it requires a lot of time. You will gain more from trades if whomever you send has at least 5 Leadership - this will allow you to ask if the faction really needs anything specific, and that trade good will be worth double. You must ask the question each time you trade, as it can change from one trade to the next.
The story of this game is surprisingly deep given how shallow a lot of the gameplay is - the end goal is to reach Vancouver (I think - I've just reached it myself in my first playthrough), with the added goal of discovering a cure for the zombie virus along the way and spreading it around to save humanity. There are *lots* of potential branches you can take, and special story events that are easy to miss - I missed a number of them on this playthrough, and they affect the ending you get.
Some tips:
1) Reclaim a Laboratory and/or Workshop as early as possible - the former is more important, as it unlocks new tech, but ammunition production doesn't consume anything but time and is available without any research the moment you reclaim a Workshop.
2) Scout as much of the map as possible as quickly as possible - any idle survivors should be scouting on each turn - but focus on pulling back the fog of war until you've unlocked Improved Scouting or equipped a survivor with Binoculars. These will turn Scouting into an AOE, revealing more structures around the one you specifically sent your survivor to.
3) Focus on choke points like bridges, and remember to reinforce them with one of the various unlockable Watchtower types. Having a really long border can really leave you scrambling to defend it, especially on some maps and especially in the early game when you don't have many survivors.
4) Check the map carefully for squares that allow you to produce materials. If the grid outside the map is Forest, you can send survivors there safely to chop wood - but if it's Hills, you must find a Park to gather materials at. You can very easily run out of materials on some maps, and this will leave you unable to reclaim more structures or build anything, so avoid repurposing park squares on a Hills map if at all possible, as the factions on these maps will also run out of materials to trade after a time. Make sure to seize these squares as early as possible on such maps.
5) Check the survivors' character sheets to find out what relationships they have with other survivors, and manage those where possible. Assigning someone to the same task as another person they dislike can cause fights, but assigning them a partner they like will give a happiness bonus, and some relationships can even end up with pregnancies and children being produced.
6) KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON YOUR FOOD PRODUCTION. This can be crucial in the early game, and it's absolutely necessary to seize nearby farms ASAP to ensure you don't suffer an early defeat. Additional tiers of farming research will increase your max food cap, as will any Warehouse squares you acquire. If you have a positive food income, it can be very valuable for trade as it automatically replenishes.
7) Click on one of the resource icons on the main map (the Ammunition icon, for instance) to open up your inventory. I beat at least 8 maps before I figured out how to do this, as I did not see any explanation for how to do this in the tutorial. The inventory screen will allow you to review what you known about other factions, your settlement policies (if any), and make use of any special items your Engineers have researched and built. Traps, for instance, can be set in infested buildings, and will slowly clear them of zombies over time, and Bait can be used to lure Hordes to to other faction squares (potentially allowing you to reclaim them without angering that faction) and Roamers away from areas you want to send your survivors to.
8) Try to have as many Hospitals as you can, and clear survivors off them once they recover from any injuries they take. Survivors recover faster from all ailments in Hospitals, and any occupied hospital square will not be available to a survivor who is suddenly injured or falls ill - they will go to a house instead.
Final thoughts:
The game can get very repetitive, especially in later levels. Each tech option must be researched again on each new map, and managing survivor happiness can get very difficult and complicated on later levels - but failing to do so can cause serious problems. You can potentially softlock yourself on some maps by destroying your ability to acquire more materials, requiring you to reset the map and try again. I didn't have to do that, but it was a near thing; although resetting that map may have granted me a Park square, solving my problem entirely.
And the game has a few... issues that I might call bugs. My avatar got married to another survivor at one point, and I brought her with me to the next map. Next thing I know, my character sheet lists her not as "Spouse" but as "Nemesis" - meaning we hate each other! I know marriages can turn south in reality, but in game it's a bit jarring to suddenly have your spouse turn on you.
That said, I'm looking forward to at least finishing the game. I would probably enjoy a subsequent playthrough now that I understand some of the mechanics better.