“War Rats: The Rat ‘Em Up” offers a chaotic and unapologetically lowbrow strategy experience, reveling in its over-the-top, trashy charm.

War Rats is sort of trash, but I love it all the same. Oh, you’re giving me a ‘ratvolver’ and letting me build ‘turrats’ and there’s a dramatic close-up of swinging rat balls in the intro montage for each stage? Yeah, go on then. It’s got the vibes of something made by the guy you knew in secondary school who exclusively drew pictures of cartoon dicks but, like, they were undeniably really good dicks. Absolute cock prodigy, that guy. Pablo Dickasso.

Anyway, I’m probably making it sound like there’s a serious dick to rat ratio here but it’s really just those balls. There are some great rat animations though. It’s a 2D strategy tug-of-war where you push through stages summoning troops and building structures, and when you do, you’re treated to a bunch of rats with hammers piling up construction barriers. When enemy rats fall, either to your own guns or your army of Ratineeers, gangs of regular-sized rats come to nibble on their corpses. They also say things like “Tell my wife…squeak”.

Also I am 95% sure your Ratvolver fires legally distinct warpstone. They saw me coming, I tell you.

Scurry underneath these Steam features, and maybe grab the demo while you’re down there.

• Brutal 2D Shooting Action: Engage in brutal, fast-paced, strategic battles against hordes of enemies. (Did I say brutal enough yet?)
• Recruit Troops: Going in alone is sure to lead to failure. Make sure you utilize your troops effectively or it’s GG. Call in reinforcements at key times to turn the tide of battle in your favour
• Buy New Weapons and Gear: Earn credits (CHz) and upgrade at the shop (rat dealer) to give yourself an edge over the endless hordes that are only going to get stronger and stranger as you get closer to TechnoRat HQ.
• Base Building: Build turrets, shrines, walls, resource generators and missile launchers to counter and overwhelm the armies of TechnoRat.
• Roguelike Progression: You have one life to fight through each district and try to reach the TechnoRat HQ and shut them down permanently. On death, spend your hard earned CHz to upgrade your attributes to do better!
• Iron Rat Mode: If you like a challenge, enable this toggle to turn your run even more hardcore! Start over at level 1 again if you die, but keep the core gameplay loop of upgrading with whatever you earned during that run.
• Unique Art Style: Experience the world of Ratopia with graphics all hand-drawn by rat artist wootusart (Me!). (Meaning I am an artist who draws rats, not that I am a rat that is an artist. That would be crazy.)
• Skirmish Mode: Select any map and just go at it, for practice or for fun. Or both!
• Multiplayer (Coming Soon): Grab a friend and go rat-toe to rat-toe on any of the maps featured in the game.

You get killed unbelievably quickly in War Rats, and I think that will to survive was where most of my compulsion to carry on playing came from, but I reckon there’s something here still. The demo is very short, giving you a taste of the many available upgrades without fully revealing its hand, so I’m mainly curious to see how that evolves. Still: free rats, free rat puns, and its out “Q2 2025” if you fancy the full thing. I would have used the subtitle ‘Rat Time Rategy’ but that’s just me.