Menace takes away the one move every XCOM player leans on. There is no overwatch and no reaction fire. You move your squads one after another, then the enemy moves all of theirs, and any squad you left standing in the open gets shot by everything that still has actions to spend. I learned that the hard way. My verdict: play it, as long as you want a tactics game that punishes you properly.
Menace is a turn-based tactical RPG from Overhype Studios, the team behind Battle Brothers. You command a strike force cut off in the Wayback system, a lawless frontier run by pirate warlords, shady corporations and broken planetary governments, and something worse is starting to show up there. I played the Steam demo: one operation of three missions, drawn at random from a pool of 10, with procedurally generated maps and objectives. The full game has been in Early Access since February 5, 2026, and the core I played has not changed much. The developers list 50 procedurally generated mission types, three planets and four enemy factions in the current build, with more planets, mission types, squad leaders and equipment planned for 1.0.
Squads, not soldiers
You never move a single marine in Menace. Every unit on the map is a whole squad with a squad leader at the front, and each leader has a personality and a perk tree of their own. Survive a battle, earn a promotion, pick a new perk. Over a few missions that turns a squad into something specific. One leader came with perks for vision and long-range accuracy, which pretty much begged me to build a sniper team around him. Another leaned toward aggressive support.
The armory is where most of the planning happens. Each squad gets a primary weapon (carbine, assault rifle, shotgun), one special weapon carried by a specialist, like a light machine gun, a rocket launcher or a sniper rifle, and then armor and extras: grenades, drones, med kits, mag pouches. Two players can kit out the same Alpha squad in completely different ways. One goes anti-armor rockets and heavy machine guns, the other LMGs and grenades.
And it matters. A sniper squad picks enemies off at range just fine, right until a light armored vehicle rolls in and it has nothing to answer with. You look at what a mission is throwing at you and build for that.
Veterans are worth protecting. Their perks change how a squad plays (better accuracy, better detection, new abilities), and a fresh replacement has none of that. Missions pay out too: some rewards become permanent gear in your arsenal, others are short-term help like reinforcements.
Cover or die in Menace
At first glance a battle looks like XCOM. Grid, cover, shoot. Then the initiative system kicks in. You choose the order your squads act in each round, the enemy answers with everything it has, and nothing on your side fires back while they do it. Charge a squad forward, end its turn there, and it is gone. Exposed squads got demolished in an instant in my runs, so I started keeping a few action points in reserve every single turn just to crouch behind cover at the end. There is a hotkey for that, and it trades movement for protection.
Cover is destructible: buildings, crates, barriers. Each tile gives a different amount depending on the terrain, vehicles can use it too, and solid cover also breaks line of sight. Flanking works the other way round. Shoot a squad from the side or rear and you ignore part of its cover. The developers openly recommend the old “four Fs”: find the enemy, fix them with suppressive fire, flank, finish. One squad pins, another circles around. It works really well.
Suppression is what keeps every fight tense. Squads under fire build it up, and a heavily suppressed squad loses accuracy and action points, and can even break and run. Press R and the game shows enemy sightlines and weapon ranges, which saved me from strolling into turret range more than once.
Most of what the demo gave me was one mission type: protect fleeing civilians while waves of pirates pour in. It is a bit like XCOM’s terror missions, except the civilians actually run across the map instead of standing around as targets. Chaotic, too. Sometimes you have to gamble on an aggressive move to save people, and winning one fight feels good exactly because the next ambush can still take a squad from you.
Jeeps, APCs and the bill
Some squad leaders are pilots, and that is how vehicles get in. The demo lets you field light vehicles (jeeps and armored cars with mounted guns), and each one counts as its own squad. Against infantry they are brutal. Used well, the starting APC’s heavy gun can carry a battle on its own, and a vehicle’s big gun is often what breaks a stalemate.
They are also the biggest target on the map. Enemy rockets and anti-armor weapons go for them, and losing one hurts twice: you lose the firepower, and you lose the supplies it cost to deploy. The demo also teases limited off-map support, air or artillery strikes, which can turn a sticky spot around. Bigger hardware is promised for the full game: tanks, walkers, self-propelled artillery, MLRS.
Menace screenshots
How it looks and sounds
Clean isometric 3D. Cities, deserts and jungles all look detailed and war-torn, and the explosions, smoke and shell impacts are impressive for an indie game. The busy scenery has a cost, though: at a glance it can be hard to tell what counts as cover and what is just decoration. The game highlights cover tiles while you move, so it is manageable. Still there.
Sound is the real highlight. Weapons hit heavy, vehicles thunder past, drums build the tension, and the whole thing has a proper Battlefield feel. It is useful as well. More than once I heard the distant hum of an enemy APC before I ever saw it.
Who should play it
If you like XCOM but wish it were harsher and more grounded, Menace is for you. It is slow and methodical, it punishes mistakes, and it wants you to think before every move - which is exactly what makes a win feel earned. If you want a relaxed tactics game where a bad turn is easy to shrug off, this is not it. For me it went straight onto the watch list as the most promising tactics game around.
