“Huh.” This, as admiringly as I can make this sound, was the first thought I thunked when I put down the demo for Titanium Court. Here is a game that is many things. The first thing it is is a play, in perhaps a literal sense, perhaps as a tool to immediately allow one to suspend their sense of disbelief at everything that is about to follow. We’re watching a play, a narrative vehicle where anything can happen as long as what’s on stage is convincing enough to make us believe it’s happening. And truthfully, I’m still trying to wrap my head around what did happen.
Right, so, the genre descriptors, let’s establish those. It is a strategy game, sure. Then it’s also a match three game, which is where the wheels are forced to start turning. You find yourself at the center of the Titanium Court, a single tile on a field of many. There are mountains, forests, rivers, and other courts (evil, nasty courts filled with Them) who want to kill you. Not during the match three portion, however, during that section you match until you run out of moves, gathering up resources to then use to send out farmers to collect more resources, or soldiers to destroy Them and their courts, as a timer runs down until you either win or die trying.
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— AP Thomson (@apthomson.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 5:54 PM
These are the mechanics as they were presented to me, and they’re all very neat and tidy. It’s the thing that surrounds the mechanics, the surreal, almost Hylicsian quality to the story. By Hylicsian I mean that the world does not do you the kindness of explaining itself. There is a tutorialisation of the gameplay, sure, but the characters, including the likes of a very hungry cat and a man who can only answer questions you haven’t asked, do not act as emitters of exposition. You must take what you are given, and figure out what to do with it.
There’s very much an Alice in Wonderland quality to it all as well, a feeling of characters talking at you, putting you, or I suppose the nameless woman (an understudy in the play) in the role of queen, adding on all the expectations that comes with it. Undoutably it would be remiss of me to not frame it as at least somewhat Lynchian, though in a direction entirely of its own making. It is a game you can only describe as odd, or alluring, or maybe they’re one in the same! Either way, I’m tickled pink by it, so I’ve thrown it on the ole wishlist, and you can do so too right here (and check out its demo too!).
