New tactical RPG Menace is like XCOM in space, but with more drama
When the Terminator style Menace shows up in a distant system, former enemies must work together in this new, galaxy spanning tactical RPG.
If you’re craving XCOM 3, then new tactical RPG
Menace might be just the meal you’re looking for. Coming from Overhype Studios (formerly of Battle Brothers) and Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, Menace sees you teaming up with the very troublemakers you were sent to handle as a terrifying, Terminator-style threat puts the very existence of humanity into question. At Gamescom 2024, I sat down for a special preview behind closed doors with managing director Jan Taaks and creative director Paul Taaks.
As a squadron of marines, you’re dispatched to the Wayback System – a sector of space cut off from the Core Worlds, so named because only the entry lanes are active, meaning there’s effectively no way back. Your job is to deal with pirates and bug-like alien threats in the zone, which the team describes as “acting like a sheriff in the Wild West.” While this structure underpins the opening hours of the
tactical RPG, your goals dramatically shift when a new threat arrives on the scene – the eponymous
Menace.
The Menace are a varied and unsettling blend of half-man, half-machine hybrids. Typically they comprise a fleshy, human-like center mass of exposed muscle and sinew, with a wide range of mechanical augmentations such as weapons, legs, and even tank-style tracks. Overhype cites ‘80s body horror and animatronics among their key inspirations for the design, as well as calling out the likes of movies such as Terminator 2 and 1999’s Virus.
As soon as the Menace rears its head, your goals change. With no reinforcements available from the core worlds, those pirates you were facing before might now be your only hope of survival. Of course, working together in such an uneasy alliance will present myriad challenges, so expect to face everything from crew clashes to outright mutinies if you aren’t able to deal with the balance of factions you’ve brought into the fold.
The central structure of Menace sees you selecting the planet you consider to be the highest priority, and tasks you with making an attempt to reclaim it through a series of missions. You’ll have to consider factors such as the threat level it’s facing, valuable resources that are there, or its importance to a faction whose upgrades you’re particularly coveting. Lose even one of those missions, however, and the region fails, costing you a turn on the space map.
Your army for each mission is made up of several squads, each of which consists of a named leader and a set of troops. You’ll set a standard weapon for the squaddies, and a special one for whoever’s in charge – there are no restrictions on class here, although with a lot of numbers under the hood you’ll likely want to coordinate your choices to specialize. Your army as a whole has a loadout cap, which applies across all your squads and encompasses the troops, armor, weapons, accessories, and so on.
Every one of the leaders is a named, written character. Lest you’re worried about repetition, Overhype tells me that there are more than you’re likely to see in a single playthrough. They’ll all have their own likes and dislikes – the team cites the Jagged Alliance series as an inspiration for the design here – and of course the desperation of the situation mandates that you’ll more than likely end up with some members of your crew that stand at moral or ethical odds with one another. How you deal with those conflicts is up to you.
Once you hit the battlefield, the first and most dramatic difference between Menace and Battle Brothers is the sheer visual upgrade. With the studio growing from three to ten people and a switch to the Unity engine, Menace is in full 3D, and it’s a big improvement. There’s a real care and attention to detail here – zoom in on your squads and you’ll notice the fine details on their weapons and equipment. In fights, you’ll actually see units move to take cover dynamically within their square as they’re targeted from certain directions, or drop to the ground when suppressed.
That suppression mechanic is at the core of combat, too. Weapons such as heavier machine guns aren’t really that good at dealing damage, but they’re excellent at filling a three-tiered suppression meter. Reach the third stage and the targeted unit will be forced to drop prone, meaning they’ll lose their next turn. Enemies can suppress you too, however, and the way shots are modeled means several units can be affected at once, although you can turn to resources like combat drugs to overcome the problem.
Depending how fights progress, you’ll see the squads respond in kind. Some may waver or begin to flee if things get too hot for them. Military teams are fairly resilient, of course, while the pirates’ huge numbers and powerful equipment belies their easily-broken morale.
Cover, then, is very powerful – if you can find it. Environments such as trees might provide some basic protection, but can be shot through or destroyed very easily. In an emergency, you can even have troops hide behind your own larger vehicles and mechs – although you probably don’t want those taking too much damage either. Even light damage to them begins to tick up a chance that they might malfunction when trying to take an action.
As for the weapons, Overhype has opted for a real rock-paper-scissors model where, for example, regular rifles will do basically no damage to a tank. To best represent this, the traditional ‘hit percentage’ of an XCOM-like has been replaced with a targeting line that changes color dynamically from red to green to display the potential effectiveness of an attack.
To support your troops, you can also bring ship upgrades into action – but they’re not a quick-fix solution. I see an unguided missile strike in action, which has a chance to land anywhere within a fairly broad radius. It’s also not instant, requiring a full turn (meaning every single unit on the field has taken an action) before it arrives.
If one of your squads falls, the leader is at risk – you’ll have just a few turns to stabilize them, else they’re gone for good. Succeed, and they’ll still remain out of action for the next few encounters. Additionally, such incidents can cause further team drama; in my demonstration, military sniper Darby is saved by pirate Jean Sy. Once the battle ends, this course of action leaves Darby disgruntled by owing her life to a rival, while the pirate earns themselves a newfound overconfidence.
For those who like a challenge, Menace is looking to provide it. But Overhype doesn’t want you to be reloading when you fail – “losses create stories,” after all. The team says Menace should feel a little less punishing than Battle Brothers – a game that’s not unfair, but is certainly unrelenting – but you can certainly expect to suffer losses as your campaign progresses. As for whether you can put a stop to the Menace? You’ll have to wait until later in 2024 to find out. Until then, you can
wishlist it on Steam.
