Menace

The most exciting turn-based strategy game of 2025

- Robin Valentine

The first time I played developer Overhype Studio’s first game, the ruthless Battle Brothers, my plucky crew of medieval soldiers got immediately beaten to death by bandits while trying to complete the easiest mercenary contract I could find. I was hooked. Not because I’m a masochist, mind, but because the depth of the game's turn-based strategy simulation was immediately compelling.

So when it was revealed back in 2023 that the studio was working on an even bigger, more ambitious sandbox as a followup, I knew it was one to watch. The intimidatingly-titled Menace has been top of the list of my most anticipated turn-based strategy games ever since — and now that I've gotten to play 30 minutes of it, I'm even more impatient to get it on my hard drive.

Set in a violent sci-fi future, the game casts you as a military commander cut off from the chain of command in the lawless Wayback system. Pulling together whatever soldiers, mercenaries, criminals and deserters you can into a makeshift force, you have to pacify dangerous pirates, deal with local factions, and take on the eponymous Menace – a mysterious and inhuman threat.

MISSION CRITICAL

Thrown into a mission to capture and hold two buildings on a desert planet, I'm surprised to find that the action feels like a collision of Jagged Alliance with the tabletop game Warhammer 40,000.

The former inspires the game's chaotic combat simulation, combining the explosive fun of an '80s action movie with an eye for detail that sees the path of every bullet tracked from gun to target. And like Jagged Alliance, your team consists of authored characters – named heroes with their own backstories – rather than the purely procedurally-generated minions of Battle Brothers.