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!
