We Love It's Guide to…
Mine gold and deploy expendable troops in 2D battles, carving through terrain to defend your brain and breach enemy bunkers.
Released 28 Sep 2012
Mine Through Terrain
Build Trap Defenses
Tunnel Into Bunkers
Choose between different factions, with their own set of expendable soldiers, mechas, and weapons. Protect your brain, mine gold, and destroy the enemy cortex in his bunker complex!
Developed by Data Realms · Published by Data Realms, LLC









In this 2D sci-fi strategy and action game, you lead a faction in a fight to protect your brain while destroying the enemy cortex. Each faction has its own soldiers, mechs, weapons, tools, and ships.
Mine gold from destructible terrain to fund your forces, then buy and deploy bodies and equipment during missions. Build bunkers with tunnels, doors, traps, and turrets, and use digging tools or weapons to reshape the battlefield—including paths into enemy defenses.
Tactical battles can be linked in a turn-based campaign, where terrain and bunker damage persist from fight to fight. The game also offers skirmishes, local multiplayer for up to four players, and built-in editors for creating custom content.
Players who enjoy Cortex Command often praise its unusual blend of side-scrolling combat and strategy, especially the physics-driven destruction that lets battles carve up the terrain. Reviews also appreciate its resource-and-deployment loop, the variety of factions and equipment, and community-made mods. Others find the controls and menus difficult to learn, and several describe the Steam version as abandoned or report problems with mod support.


| Platforms | Windows, macOS |
|---|---|
| Achievements | 11 |
| Age ratings |
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| Players | 1–4 |
| Play modes |
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| Other modes |
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| Multiplayer | Cortex Command supports up to 4 players in shared/split-screen local multiplayer. The store description states cooperative and versus multiplayer for skirmish or campaign missions, including examples such as 2v2, 1v3, and 4 players versus CPU. The provided information consistently indicates no built-in online multiplayer on the Steam version. |
| Multiplayer & mods | The game has built-in editors, Steam Workshop support, and mod support for custom missions, factions, weapons, and other content. Reviews also mention the community open-source version and community project adding or improving multiplayer functionality, but this is not presented as an official Steam-version feature. Some reviews mention unofficial online workarounds or broken/third-party solutions. |
| Controller support | Xbox |
| Controller required | No |
| Metacritic | 44/100 View on Metacritic |
| Website | Official website |