Wartile is a gorgeous strategy game that keeps the action moving, our interview

Watch in 60 fps on YouTube | Subscribe to Polygon on YouTube

There are many video games out there that attempt to replicate the experience of tabletop gaming, but let's be honest: Many of them are painfully slow, and some are downright boring. To combat that tedium, Wartile does something very ambitious by blending a real-time movement system with tabletop miniatures-style combat.

Michael Rud Jakobsen is the founder and creative director of Playwood Project, the indie team behind Wartile, and you can try the demo on Steam right now. I had a few days with the press version of the game, which is now on Kickstarter, and was very surprised by the level of polish — even at this early state.

Turns out that this isn't Jakobsen's first rodeo. He's been a game developer for about a decade, and recently worked at IO Interactive. He was an artist on Kane & Lynch 2 and a game designer on the Hitman series. In this interview we talk about his inspiration for the game, as dive into the unique cool-down mechanics that keep the action flowing.