Incline MENACE - sci-fi turn-based tactical RPG from Battle Brothers devs - coming to Early Access in Q3 2025

[Fargus]

You gotta love it how the white blonde guy with pure look of frustration on his face is pushed to the back like a bitch-boy cuck and the least important member there.

Dudes chest is literally lit up with decorations, he appears to be ranking officer.

General Cancelled surrounded by diversity hires.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I am shocked that a studio behind these characters would release a shit trailer full of womyn

If 'ticking boxes' was a picture...

I wonder if this nonsense was a requirement for government 'support' or if they really wanted to produce generic slop.

It is generic slop. The art is usually indicative of the finale project and how pozzed it is. I guarantee you this project will be filled with woke garbage where woman are giving orders to grizzled men and are portraited as competent and men as clueless baffoons.

 

[Ascetic]

On steam it's pretty much the second biggest western tacticool behind XCOM2.

As Teut Busnet mentioned, Wartales has since taken over.

View attachment 58426

If you don't know what Wartales is, it's basically a version of Battle Brothers that is inferior in every way imaginable but made for a mainstream audience. That doesn't neccesarily mean it's a bad game (even if I really don't like it) but BB is just vastly superior.

Being possibly the closest competitor in the mercenary tactical rpg genre, you can see how Overhype may have taken some cues from them.

This will probably be what people will call a "bad move, dudes."

You can't base Wartales' reception on pure graphics and mechanics because the BB devs are turbo autists with negative marketing and business sense. Their fans had to beg them to release DLC, and they still haven't translated the game into a single other language in 7 years since release. It's always been the kind of game you find out about via word of mouth on forums.

Wartales actually invested in marketing, had some hype for its release, is on Gamepass and other services like Geforce Now, is available in other languages, etc. You're right that it's more accessible but that's only part of why it got a sales boost. BB has still done pretty well from what I've seen. If it was easier to mod it'd be doing even better.

 

[ropetight]

Wartales actually invested in marketing, had some hype for its release, is on Gamepass and other services like Geforce Now, is available in other languages, etc.

It seems that is where things went in the wrong direction.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Wartales is pozzed globohomo garbage as well.

 

[kangaxx]

The combat barks are questionable at best.

They honestly sound like they've come from Splice... there are quite a few generic game prod sounds on there. I use the platform for music stuff.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Not to mention one of the devs supposedly having a small meltdown over half the hireable units in the game being women or something.

View attachment 58428
View attachment 58429

Yeah, who doesn't need modernism in their medieval mercenary simulator?

Heh, makes me glad I did not cave in and buy it. Going to do what the Shitro dev recommended, invest my time in other games.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/2432860/announcements/detail/524203331331031066

Dev Diary #1 - Breaking the Silence
It is finally time to break the silence on MENACE and spill the beans on all the ins and outs of the game, but most importantly to discuss them with you - our community!

To this end we will start our well known dev blogs that so many of you are used to from Battle Brothers.

We will follow a similar format and timing with focusing on a certain topic for each blog and share pictures, gifs or videos to go with it. We aim to publish a new blog every week on Friday and will also try to be available on our Discord after each blog's release to discuss the content with you!

Today we will address the most pressing topics:

When will MENACE release?​

We have been developing the game for a really long time with the first prototype dating back as far as 2018, that is 6 years now. Over the years we moved from a 2D perspective and our own engine to full 3D and Unity while also building the team up to 10 people.

Growing a team that much while moving to a whole new technology and developing a huge game at the same time is a massive challenge and might help to understand why development takes so long.

We are now in a state where we feel comfortable with finally announcing a release date window for the Early Access: Fall of 2025.

Yes, the game will be released into Early Access. For Battle Brothers the Early Access was absolutely essential in making sure the final release was as bug-free, well balanced and as feature rich as possible. Our community helped us tremendously with this and we want to have the same level of interaction and participation for MENACE.

What is MENACE?​

MENACE is a turn-based tactics game that models medium scale modern combat in a low powered SciFi setting pitching players against an overwhelming and ever evolving enemy threat.

You can find the full feature list and description on Steam, so head over there and read up on all the features of the game if you did not do that yet! Instead of repeating that info here we want to share some thoughts on the game itself.

Turn based tactics is our thing and that is what both MENACE and BB are. When playing MENACE you will very quickly feel the Battle Brothers DNA: Intuitive mechanics, meaningful tactical choices, tragic deaths, exhilarating wins and crushing defeats. All this while being a lot less frustrating and easier to get into than Battle Brothers. Meanwhile, the game will be even more complex and multi-layered to make sure you can really dive deep into it if you want.

Ultimately, both games are not only very challenging tactical combat simulations, they also aim to generate stories. To this end players need freedom of choice and despite MENACE introducing some handwritten elements it will still offer lots of procedural content, gameplay layers and moving parts that keep each playthrough different from the next and allow players to experience their very own stories of battles won and lost.

Finally, the visuals are on a whole new level. We feel that BB does have a unique charm but the presentation definitely left a lot of room for improvement. Our goal was to address this while still keeping the unique design and style that makes an Overhype Game. On the one hand, we now have mocap animations, massive explosions, ragdolls, full 3D models with legs, walkers, tanks and more.

On the other hand, we have hand drawn characters, weapons, items, icons and more that are of course drawn by Paul himself who also designed and created the concept art for all characters, environments and enemies in the game. We also opted for a realistic but somewhat abstracted and colorful visual style that is reminiscent of BB.

Any big change like this is a risk but we decided to take it and are convinced that evolving our own skill, the studio and the games we make to the next level is the right thing to do.

Why are we making MENACE?​

After the low-power fantasy world of Battle Brothers a change to the SciFi world of MENACE may come as a surprise for many community members. However, after working on Battle Brothers for almost 10 years we were in need of a fresh setting that helps us spark our creativity and enthusiasm.

We have always been huge fans of Warhammer 40k tabletop and video games like Dawn of War, Men of War, Jagged Alliance and - surprise - X-com. All games that revolve around modern or SciFi firearms based combat. The step from one turn based setting to the other felt a lot smaller for us as the overarching genre is still the same, just the means of battle are different.

With BB we wanted to model medieval small unit combat as close to reality as we could, including morale, fatigue, armor, weapon types and so on. With MENACE we aim to do something similar but this time with modern combat. Elements like concealment, detection, suppression, violence of action, flanking and more should model real life firearms combat as closely as possible.

In both worlds fantasy elements allow us to go way beyond a historical or contemporary combat simulator. Adding supernatural creatures, magic or advanced technology allows us to break up the restrictions of reality and introduce ever changing new challenges, surprises and possibilities both for the player and the enemies.

We decided to increase the scope of the game to model larger scale concepts like combined arms, vehicle warfare, squads, walkers, artillery and offmap strikes. The changed scope does not only drastically change how the game looks and feels but it also adds lots of new challenges and possibilities which players have hardly been able to explore so far in similar games.

In the coming weeks and months we will go into more detail on the different aspects of the game and are looking forward to chat about them with you!

 

[Alienman]

Fall 2025 EA release. Rough.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

We have been developing the game for a really long time with the first prototype dating back as far as 2018, that is 6 years now. Over the years we moved from a 2D perspective and our own engine to full 3D and Unity while also building the team up to 10 people.

Growing a team that much while moving to a whole new technology and developing a huge game at the same time is a massive challenge and might help to understand why development takes so long.

Fucking devs, always loving to waste time and resources on trivialities.

All this while being a lot less frustrating and easier to get into than Battle Brothers

Bad sign.

 

[Pink Eye]

Ugh.

Not a fan of the art direction or whatever they're trying to go for in this game. Nothing in the previews or trailers really grabs me. This is probably going to be like Darkest Dungeon 2: so far removed from the original that it won't really appeal to me.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

whatever. Again, you guys are a bunch of whiny bitches. Game sounds incline as fuck, who is making anything close to this? Cry about everything

Did any of you even read the New Steam page game features? Or did you just see that the characters had legs and there is a rotating camera and started to rage? The game sounds way more detailed and involved than I had imagined it would be, with fighting various strings of linked battles you choose across different planets from a mother ship using numerous squads and limited resources all w/ individual character interaction, growth etc..

 

[Hydro]

Dex is just too traumatized. Every move towards anything resembling mainstream is considered a fall from grace aka the decline.

 

[jungl]

it looks cool so far but where is the combat UI? We have no idea how combat actually plays out. I dont mind the phoned in and or bad voice acting.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'll reserve judgement until the game comes out because BB was great and if these are the same devs then they deserve some benefit of the doubt.

But there's some wierd stuff here like:

Fucking devs, always loving to waste time and resources on trivialities.

we now have mocap animations

Why?!?!

 

[rojay]

These developers are about the only ones who could have made a game like Myth: the Fallen Lords and done it well, whether turn-based or real-time. Shame they went modern/sci-fi but if it turns out to be a good game I'll buy it.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Damn, Myth the fallen lords...

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I'll reserve judgement until the game comes out because BB was great and if these are the same devs then they deserve some benefit of the doubt.

But there's some wierd stuff here like:

Fucking devs, always loving to waste time and resources on trivialities.

we now have mocap animations

Why?!?!

I mean for sure they are trying to appeal to a larger market. I loved BB, loved the art work and feel of the game, but I am 53. People 40 and under are in large part going to look at the game and simply discount it out of hand. I have a brother 20 years younger than me (my mom had me when she was 17) and I have been able to show him some older games and he absolutely loves them. He shows his friends and most of them like them too, but some simply won't play them because the UI is too weird and its often too hard to figure out exactly what to do next. Many younger people will just scroll right past something that looks like BB.

Perhaps if overhype was not developing I would be more critical, but for now they have the benefit of the doubt with me, I bought all the DLC for BB and have just under 400 hours playing the game, so I am obviously a fan.

 

[Tyranicon]

Many younger people will just scroll right past something that looks like BB.

You're probably right but I actually really like the art style. I think it fits this kind of mercenary simulator.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Dunno why people are upset about the art style and gameplay. These guys have proven their worth with BB, at least enough to give them credit till the game releases.

Enviado do meu Pixel 7a através do Tapatalk

 

[GrainWetski]

They're not going to get the average retard to buy their games no matter what they do. Losing their established audience as well will just kill the company. Oh well, many such cases and they certainly wouldn't be the last to do it chasing a new audience.

 

[Hydro]

I don’t think chasing a new audience is their main goal. Intro cinematic has shown that they want to recreate the feel of late nineties games with clear inspirations being Aliens, Star Craft and Quake 2 (among many others), without going into territory of cliche “spiritual successors”. They are clearly suckers for a captivating gameplay and thick atmosphere.

 

[Serus]

Dex is just too traumatized. Every move towards anything resembling mainstream is considered a fall from grace aka the decline.

Considering the state mainstream is in, how is it not a reasonable thing to do? I don't play AAA games at all, I haven't played any for several years. There is very little mainstream games can offer me most of the time that indies can't and that i want in my games. Except annoying me a lot in several ways.

As I've said already, the developers made a game I like very much in the past so i'm not giving up on the game before i see it. On the plus side this is not an arpeegee with romances and tons of writing. It means that any woke (or whatever you want to call it) content even if favored by authors this time doesn't have as much room to show. I can live with an overabundance of vaginal or dark skinned people in a tactical game if its just them being there. Finally, if the game won't have a well above average gameplay, it is game over for me, "flawed but nice" won't cut it. I certainly won't buy it before trying or waiting for other people to take the bullet. I wouldn't be saying that if they made a "better" BB2, preferably without brothers with vaginas.

 

[Abu Antar]

I don't have a big problem with the art style itself. I'm slightly disappointed by the move from 2D to 3D. On the other hand, if they are going with destructible terrain, it might be easier to do in 3D.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

They're not going to get the average retard to buy their games no matter what they do. Losing their established audience as well will just kill the company. Oh well, many such cases and they certainly wouldn't be the last to do it chasing a new audience.

why not? average retards buy lots of TB strategy games, look at Balldurps gay 3