Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2020
Drone Swarm
Developer stillalive studios
Drone Swarm is a very unique take on tactical games. Control 32,000 drones in quick, fast-paced fights. Combine your swarm abilities and counter constantly evolving attacks of your opponents. Survive varying enemy waves, get upgrades to your swarm, and make it to the next system alive! From the Steam store page
181 reactions from 3 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon) · newest Sep 7, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
61
Fresh
109 positive · 70 negative
95% range 54–68%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 109 | 70 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mastodon * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
2 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mixed
217 of 344 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 181 · most liked firstA very well made real time strategy game with the unique spin of having to handle the swarm. The swarm is basically the only resource you care about, you don't have to mine gold or similar stuff but you start every encounter with 32k drones, and only later upgrades allow you to repair them after death. If you manage to loose all your drones you lost, the entire point is to constantly use the swarm in creative ways to protect your mothership and destroy enemies at the same time. Especially the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Looks better than it plays. The swarm idea seems like a very good one, and it's also nice to have more physics in games. I don't really know how they technically managed this. It's pretty nice to have a lot of control over the swarm. However fast paced, real time strategy doesn't go together with the cool looking impressive physics. You have no time to look at the drones flying around during normal gameplay as you need to react quick. And taking out the impressive physics the gameplay is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Can be finished in about 8 hours, so for the price i'd recommend get it on sale. Otherwise though, its a fun 8 hours. No replay value though sadly, just a quick thrill.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dud, kept my attention for maybe an hour. Very repetitive and not as fun as I hoped. Also the "skill points" you unlock are just extra actions, didn't see any sort of customization.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the most innovative gameplay I've seen in a while. It reminds me a bit of the movie Ender's Game, where in the final fight also many drones are controlled by humans. Unfortunately the story is a bit weak. It's predictable and exaggerated, though the animations and art style is looking very good. And there is a nice plot twist, which is unexpected and a welcome change. It took me 6h to reach it though. After that, the story wasn't that cringe after all. Apart from the story, the…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wish they made better tutorials. I still have no idea how most of combat is suppose to be played. I think they made controls to be compatible with other devices, but for PC the key settings is very poorly designed. At some point I even wished they had time stop button as enemies move too fast while drones don't react fast enough. First part of a game tend to be very important as it is what keeps players keep playing. Sadly poor level design and game mechanics made my interest evaporate.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun, different game, took me 8 hours to complete. not sure about replayability though. Could of done with more polishing before release, but nothing game breaking.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not recommended. For me it's early access. Game looks very nice -colors and animations are ok. BUT: Not much to do - just jump from one battle to another, win and repeat. Boring. No any economy. No tech tree - only abilities for drones. Lack of descriptions and any information about modules. Gauss gun - yes you have it. You can install it on Argo. And is shooting. Somewhere. Somethimes. Terrible polish translation - missing words, signs and whole pages of text. If you don't know how to do…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nice idea, fun while it lasts. However, very little replay value and once you get the hang of it, it kinda feels like chore. The story is somewhat OK, a bit predictable but a nice touch. Can be finished within 8 hours or so, which I think is kinda short for the full price. Verdict: get it on sale
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Bought the game + the deluxe upgrade, thought it'd be fun. Now I'm at a certain point in the game where progressing is like beating 20 bosses in any other game on the hardest difficulty. I'm on easy because I want to enjoy the story, not work my ass off protecting 3 idiots that don't fight back and have next to no health. Let alone for the Argo with a drone cap of 32k, how am I gonna protect them (because I have to, can't let any of 'm die otherwise the beautiful "mission failure" pops up, like…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A real time tactics game, where you control a stationary ship that contains a swarm of 32,000 drones. You have no control over your ship, only the drones. You control them by choosing a mode (defense, attack, energy, etc) and usually choose a path by drawing a line. To attack you draw a line over an area with a ship, to defend you draw a line to have your drones form a wall. Sometimes you just select a direction or no path is needed though., like for the kinetic push ability. The campaign…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great Concept! Poor execution A game for the hardcore gamer, not so much the casual gamer. Now don't get me wrong, I have been enjoying being able to control 10's of thousands of drones with just a few clicks and mouse movements. The downside though is that the developers haven't exactly balanced the difficulty in line with how you progress. You go from being able to absolutely decimate the first few waves and thinking the you "want a little bit more of a challenge" to something that is just…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fantastic concept, great execution, fun gameplay, and really awesome graphics. However, despite having an 8 core, 4ghz processor, Nvidia GeFore 1060 3GB, and 32 GB of DDR3 Ram, past the first couple of missions, the framerate dropped to a consistent 10-15, with regular drops down as low as 3-5 FPS. Unfortunately, when the FPS drops that low, you lose almost all control of the camera, and the drone swarm fails to accept around half the commands you give it. Not ot mention how difficult a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Your very own 'Enders Game' fleet, it sounds so awesome and it kinda is. But unfortunately, I have to agree with another negative review, it does get repetitive very quickly. The animations you can't skip become tedious and I for one am not a fan of the way you control the camera. I have no doubt it become more challenging later on, thus more fun. Note to devs, I have seen the 'asteroid punch' go through them a few times, without nudging. Might want to give that a look. I would have kept on…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →gets very, very boring and repetitive very shortly. a game with a lot of style and not much substance. the story isn't very good either. i'd say its worth it if you can get it for very very very cheap but otherwise, avoid.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this game is so incredibly bad, for some reason it desides to remove all of the most powerful upgrades from you, leaving you to die no matter how hard you try, i got really good at this game in a short time, then after the rewind thing, it just revoked all my strongest upgrades, and put me against even stronger enimies than before, so i couldnt win any level without dying at least once, every attack delt 12% of my hull integrity, and enemies started to attack the location of the ARGO without me…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game's about 8 hours long, and unfortunately the gameplay and story only start to really pick up about 3 hours in. Once you reach that point it's a unique pseudo RTS with some neat tricks you can pull thanks to the swarm, and each battle does require you to know what each enemy type is and how best to counter it while using your swarm as effectively as possible. Upgrades are a little clunky in how you unlock them, but it also does make it so you can have access to a fairly wide range of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The idea is good but its not finished... first i had some superweapon i can attach on top of the ship, nothing says how to use it, if you ask discord they say it fires automatically but inever seen it do that, tried both railgun and the other thing. Next i got to a mission when it asks to move the ship to specific spot... there is literally no place to see the controls for it, it is static in all other missions, wasd does not movie it, mouse does not move it... Its someones half made project…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really fun premise. Control a fluid swarm of 32 thousand drones by drawing lines on the field and otherwise interacting with units using 4 different abilities, awesome. The execution, however, is trash. The game itself is really stuttery and janky. The UI frequently breaks. The control style and gameplay reality frankly suck. The screen gets so cluttered you will miss enemy icons while trying to manage the swarm and the order system is breaking down. many times you will try to give an order to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is an absolute disaster. The core ideas are potentially fun but the game tries its best to get in your way at every turn. Breathtakingly buggy and poorly balanced, annoying repeating cutscenes that you have to rewatch every time you retry a mission and immediate game overs on starting sometimes because the ship you're guarding just blows up as soon as you start, Cringy dialogue, nonsensical storylines, terrible translation, it's just an absolute mess which is a shame because there's…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i personally recommend this game (i even bought the delux when it only took away 1 dollar and we'll money we'll spent has an amazing story though getting max everything it quite easy and from my time playing (i finished it) if you play long enough you can get everything personally the only issue i have but i don't got a clue on is if there going to make multiplayer or even a customization or something like that anyway money we'll spent personally
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The concept sounds really interesting, but it feels like they didn't really know what to do with it. The game-play often comes down to scribbling on enemy ships to damage them (after a delay). As it's quite a short game, this could be fine, but its compounded by the random spikes in difficulty. Sometimes there's a lot of story build up to an enemy being really dangerous, but then the battle's really easy, and other times it seems like a routine mission, but then a lot of small ships appear and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Feels unfinished. In game text and Character narration don't align. Very structured and linear mission design. Doesn't feel replay-able. Cant empathize or connect with the story thus far. Cool concept, a cool 3-4 hour experience before you're droned out, I wouldn't pay full price for it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Glitchy and awkward controls, cant que actions so you just spend time waiting or canceling and reissuing commmands over and over. Has some intresting ideas for mekanics but most just aren't worth using, I had an alright time. It just doesn't feel polished at all
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fun little concept, but the game runs like trash. I don't have the fastest computer, and when the framerate drops so does the speed of your drones. The enemy keeps functioning the way they always have though, making the game more difficult when frames drop. Very frustrating!
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is an excerpt of my much more detailed review and analysis, [url=https://zapzockt.de/en/drone-swarm-review-test/]that you can find here (ENG & DE) and also as Video below. | [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/31498557/]Visit and maybe follow my curator page, to get more detailed reviews | Opinion and conclusion Drone Swarm has a very original and unique concept that can be really fun if you like the setting and controls. The drone controls are usually very catchy and the fights…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Cant say i'd recommend this. its fairly repetitive and even tedious at times. you need to be a big fan of rts games and space games to enjoy this games.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I AM SWARM Drones are not toys so make sure to make good use of them. Send them to annihilate spaceships by dragging lines or create barriers for protection. Total drone count is your health, don't loose to many or it's game over. Another ability is charge, where you hold button in one point with your sausage finger and blast drones with high impact. Some objects can be pushed by doing that technique like cargo boxes. Missions include not always defending but also other goals to complete, but…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →One of those games I wish I had refunded in time. In the end it is a badly implemented "arena" RTS with controls that seem to have been developed solely for mobile / tablet devices. This is further fostered by the fact that the first dozens of missions take only 20 seconds (yes: 20 seconds!) to pass. Add to this the cringe-worthy dialogue and story, game-breaking bugs (when I got to the later missions, suddenly half of all my ship upgrades had disappeared), the bad UI and controls, the fact…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great Concept! Poor execution
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The drone swarms mechanics are quite unique and a lot of fun to play with; however this is also this game's only strength. Story is okay with ordinary protagonists, side-missions seemingly come out of nowhere though. Most damning of all, the game is super short (I am writing this as I finished the game) and offers no replayability whatsoever. I encountered quite a few bugs too, nothing too game-breaking per se, but enough to see the game still needs some polish. Overall, I would recommend the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Short game with nice graphics, story and voice acting. It's not a strategy game it is a simple puzzle game, with logic like rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock :D. The game is buggy as ♥♥♥♥, from small annoying UI bugs to game breaking (mission stuck) bugs, where you need to restart the whole game to even have a chance to pass a mission. It can stuck in cut-scene after beating a difficult level, so then you need to re-do it once again. There is zero strategy involved and different tactics…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Interesting setting. No really, it's kinda cool. But: The game mechanics are iffy and in my opinion too fast paced. If you make a more than minor mistake, you usually have to reload the level. Not big on that myself, but it might be alright for you. Its biggest problem is the writing. My god the writing. I don't really want to go into detail, but it's insultingly bad. ChatGPT could have done better. I mean it. It's basically 2 particular Star Trek episodes rolled into a game - without the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It was a cool idea, but not as fun to play as I had hoped :(
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After one or two missions, the game maxes out CPU usage and slows to a crawl. I believe this to be down to their DRM, DO NOT BUY
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Bought this expecting an RTS of some sort, and it simply isn't one. If anything, I'd say this is a tower defence where you manually control one tower and don't have a maze of any sort. You control exactly 1 unit, with an admittedly very shiny particle field around it to animate your attacks.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The concept sounds cool. I beat it already. There is 90 missions and the story was interesting but, you can't move the mother ship. All you do is drag your cursor and direct it to the enemy or make a wall. That's it. Still it was a good time burner. Also, it only took me 9 hours to beat soooooo pretty short but, I guess that is why it was 24 dollars
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A lot to unpack. Gameplay - 5/10: Positive: Commanding the drones was very fun and satisfying and the upgrades made it very interesting to see how new things interacted with each other. And although I found myself frustrated at times, I still enjoyed the fundamental mechanics and how it was implemented. Game is about 7-9 hours depending on difficulty (w/ side missions) Negative: Personally, this did not feel like an RTS, but more like a spin of a tower defence. But that did not stop me…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wish this were good. It's a different take on the RTS genre, and we all know that RTS are suffering right now, but this ... this ain't it, I'm afraid. Let's ignore the cheap presentation, the very mid graphics, the bad voice acting, the terrible writing, the boring plot... and just focus on the raw gameplay. Well, you're basically "controlling" a drone ship. The ship itself is immobile. All you CAN do is select between various different modes, 75% of which you can mostly ignore for the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Genuinely one of the most fun games i've played. Just blitzed through it in one sitting. In game graphics/visualizations are phenomenal, just something about the fluidity of the swam that rubs me right. Voice acting is well above what i'd expect. In game cinematics are.... strange. Not offputting or anything, just a weird way of movement. Very engrossing story with some very simple dialog choices that have minor result on the story Very hopeful that there is more to come, well worth every…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →CLUNKY, NOT OPTIMIZED, STUTTERING, SUCKING VIDEO CUT SCENES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIGHT, VOMIT CAMERA CONTROL !!!! And still it is fun of the new concept! Normaly I would give thumbs down but the new concept wins. EVEN IF YOU MOSTLY CAN NOT USE IT BECAUSE IT IS NOT A STRATEGY GAME MORE A HACK AND SLASH!!! That being said, promising concept for a real strategic game, Supreme Commander T1000 !!!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great idea. But didnt work in execution. Didnt feel like I was being tactical since everything was moving so fast
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Would be a good phone game, cause of it simplistic gameplay. You use Q&W to switch between Attack and Defend Mode left mouse for drawing an attack line. Right mouse for calling back drones holding to look around. Now, what i didn't like was that the game doesn't tell you the amount of drones that can be dispatched with a single draw (10k max) for attack and defence. It also doesn't tell you that drones start moving only after one second so you actively have to plan your attack pattern in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →at the first part of the game was easy then in the in 5 min it is impossible to beat the controls are madding to use at parts of the game some enemies move too fast while drones don't react fast enough
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Finished the game. This game is infuriating because there's so much potential and so little payoff: why the XP if It doesn't unlock things that I can select according to my gameplay, and not forced upgrades gathered along the way? How can I choose which loadout is the best for me if I can't test them somewhere? Some upgrades say "it's better than before" but I can't see why: no number, no information. The actual gameplay is quite good and dynamic, even if I feel there's not enough information…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's by no means a perfect game, but I had fun for 7.5h. You can easily play the game for 15 minutes a day, because a single mission does not take more than 5-10 minutes. Then you get a little bit of story, some upgrades for your ship and the drones that you command. So you still feel like you accomplished something. The story is nice and contains a twist that keeps it interesting. So give it a try, it's not too expensive. The idea feels fresh, although the realization is not perfect.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's boring and repetitive a cool idea just not very fun to play
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Interesting conceptually, it's probably more suited to an ipad. Combat is either easy or an escort mission.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game isn't nearly as unique as the marketing makes it sound. It's basically a slower-paced, more complicated version of Fruit Ninja that doesn't work well on touch screens. The story is lame and the writing is amateurish. The whole thing lacks polish.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game seemed much cooler in the video while the concept is good I have a few gripes with it: 1. The enemies are much faster from the get go. 2. There is no difficulty setting so you can die in the early game. 3. This only gets better when you go to specific nodes. 4. The game relies on you having gone to the nodes. Overall played it once not again
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Fine game but cant replay it with out getting anymore value than the first time
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a very tactical game where the focus is on the gameplay. The gameplay is very fun and I really liked the game. It's a strategy game with a very uncommon gameplay. Although I enjoyed playing the game there are multiple things which could have been better: * More balanced levels: Some are very easy and some are very hard * Less escort missions: There are far too many missions where some ships have to be defended * Move-Commands for the ships to escort: They simply stay in place although…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not really swarming with fun... I like the upgrading of your ship and all the new abilities that you acquire, and I like the graphics too... and the gimmick in the main-menu is fun to play with for all of 2 minutes... but yeah man, other than those points, I just didn't really find the game to be fun. I mean, it's certainly not anti-fun or a fun-vampire at all, but I just kinda found myself plodding along doing mission after mission and watching cinematics for a story that I didn't really care…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Had the opportunity to play for a few hours, so this review might change down the road once I get around playing some more. LOVE the graphics and the overall idea of combining formation gameplay with a simple drawing mechanism and RTS. Given I have little time for most games, it's perfectly paced with small fast missions. Now having played the early release version, it might be rough around the edges, but the devs already put out an update that fixed a lot of issues. So that's a very good…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I liked the game play a lot but i also wish there was more alien races like every few times you entered a new system there would a new alien race
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Have been playing it for some time, and I really appreciate how unique and fresh it is compared to other games that one might consider to be in the same "genre". It is NOT a standard space strategy game with base or fleet building and stuff. It's a very unique tactical battle game that I enjoy exactly because of the tactical depth of the battles. In the metagame, it feels a bit like the classic Star Control (for anyone who remembers ;-) and delivers a thrilling story AND exploration motivation.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I pre-ordered this a couple of days before it released, and I gotta say the two weapons you get are highly disappointing. They never hit enemies, it's basically just a fancy decoration for your ship. But otherwise, the gameplay is fun; and I love the idea of controlling a massive swarm of drones to attack & whatnot. At first I actually though this was a roguelike (would be cool if they could make that a spin-off game or something), but it's actually story-based. I think the story is pretty…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I enjoy Drone Swarm a lot – the mechanics and challenges were fun and engaging, especially after playing hundreds of hours of Crying Suns, Out There: Ω Edition, FTL, and many more out there. Try out the game, if you're into Action-RTS and Tactical Puzzles. Playing before the release was a great honour for me!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is extremely good but the game is also has a lot of bugs
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It feels very... meh... I mean the drone control aspect is fun, but other than that... Its also a little clunky. I haven't found a way to pause so I can plan a placement of a wall or attack line, and it seems as though the ships are sorta, off center from where they actually are making my lines of attack sometimes miss completely when I draw it right in their orbital path. The laser attacks basically break through everything no matter what I do and the strategy appears to be just kill them as…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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