Black Powder Red Earth - Tactical Jihadist hunting simulator

[toro]

http://www.blackpowderredearth.com

“The near present. Step into the event horizon of a failed state, as Private Military Contractor – Cold Harbor, hunting jihadist
terrorists in war-torn sprawls as a lethal surrogate for the host nation

Black Powder Red Earth® has no tech trees, base building or R&D mini-games. It focuses entirely on meaningful tactical decisions that influence the outcome of raids in urban environments.”

 

[Falksi]

Added to wishlist.

Like the idea, not sure how it'll translate into an actual game though.

No RPG aspects or base-building may be more realistic, but will it be more fun?

 

[toro]

Added to wishlist.

Like the idea, not sure how it'll translate into an actual game though.

No RPG aspects or base-building may be more realistic, but will it be more fun?

Depends. If the game is tactical enough then it might be more fun.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Holy shit, I am amazed that there aren’t hordes of rabid SJWs trying to cancel this game. Its all about a bunch of bearded whitey mercs (well there is also a chink called “China” so there is some diversity) in tacticool gear stalking a fictional middle eastern city, giving headshots to random mudslimes, calling in drone strikes and utilising all kinds of high tech shit like phone hacking to remain stealthy or to gain advantage in combat. All that just to keep a petrodollar dictatorship threatened by “NOT-ISIS” in place. Suicide bombers all over the place. Any military aged male is a threat, mission briefings often emphasise that you are not to take the high value targets into custody but kill them on sight etc. Some serious Obama-era War on Terror shit going on right there.


Guess its too low profile for the twitter crowd to notice for now at least.


Anyway, I played for a while now, here are my findings so far:


- The tacticool aspect is cranked up to 11 here, there is more military/spec ops lingo in here than in about five average Tom Clancy novels combined

- The interface felt a bit clunky at the start (you have to use keyboard a lot more than I expected to do stuff like rotating your mercs etc) but I got used to it quickly

- There is a lot of emphasis on stealth, if a civilian or an enemy sees you, the situation in the area deteriorates, enemies gradually become more numerous and attentive until you are compromised and hordes of jihadists start to pour in and also get overwatch (you don’t want that)

- This deterioration works kinda like the heat mechanic in the Blades in the Dark PnP game (ie heat increases everytime something bad happens, at certain level of heat you get compromised)

- The usual mission has you moving through the city streets, while trying to stay stealthy if possible until you locate a target building, you can then choose to either breach the building (dynamic entry that compromises you, but gives you advantage during the assault, stealthy entry which doesn’t give you away right away but is more dangerous), or you can just drone strike the building to flush the target out and kill him on the street

- There is a ton of random events which influence the mission, you can scout out each building, which sometimes gives you advantages (like being able to hack something etc)

- Combat is extremely lethal “a hit is a kill” affair. Your mercs have higher chance to hit then the normal muzzie AK47 dudes, but there are also more skilled enemy types – generally you want to stay out of combat as much as possible

- No saving during missions, difficulty is pretty OK

- You can kill civilians at will (they will give away your position) – the devs sure are ballsy


Overall, the turn based combat is not especially complex (there are no changeable stances, it’s the usual two or three actions per turn system etc), but the game is fun and well put together. The price is IMO OK and whoever were the madmen that dared to do this in the current year are extremely based.

 

[agris]

- The interface felt a bit clunky at the start (you have to use keyboard a lot more than I expected to do stuff like rotating your mercs etc) but I got used to it quickly

Emphasis mine; that doesn't sound clunky, that sounds like a good UI. Thanks for the feedback, this sounds worth trying.

 

[Fedora Master]

I like the juxtaposition of hardcore tacticool combat with googly-eyed pixelart terrorists.

 

[Gastrick]

Overall, the turn based combat is not especially complex (there are no changeable stances, it’s the usual two or three actions per turn system etc), but the game is fun and well put together. The price is IMO OK and whoever were the madmen that dared to do this in the current year are extremely based.

The media is now only reporting jihadi terrorism by mistake and hastily attempts to cover it up after. It's been like this since current year was 2017 and perhaps even earlier.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/03/the-boulder-jihad-and-jihad-denial

 

[HoboForEternity]

this looks very cool. added to wishlist

 

[4249]

Oh this thing. Originally it was supposed to be some sort of tacticool MMO shooter on Mars with social networking or some shit. Then they released a facebook game. Then I didn't bother to follow too much anymore. Whatever it is now looks somewhat interesting tbh. I originally followed it somewhat since the developer was founded by Jon Chang, the vocalist of Discordance Axis and Gridlink. And No One Knows What the Dead Think nowadays I guess.

Destructoid seems to still have an article up about the original vision: https://www.destructoid.com/stories...-red-earth-is-so-web-2-0-it-hurts-33634.phtml