MENACE is the second game from Overhype Studios, the development studio that created one of the most infamous turn-based strategy games in recent memory, Battle Brothers. With this level of pedigree behind Overhype Studios, it’s understandable that a lot of fans of Battle Brothers, and turn-based strategy players in general, have been really excited for the release of MENACE. So, is the hype for MENACE well-deserved? Or is it fair to say it has been… Overhyped? I can confidently say that MENACE is going to be one of 2026’s standout titles and one of the best turn-based strategy games of the year.
- Genre: Turn-Based Strategy | Roleplaying Game | Sci-Fi
- Developer: Overhype Studios
- Publisher: Hooded Horse
- Price: $TBA | TBA€ | £TBA
- Release Date: 5 February, 2026
- Reviewer: Nuno Marques (PC)
- Target Audience: Turn-Based Strategy players; RPG fans; Battle Brothers players; XCOM players
- Final Score: 8.5/10
What is MENACE?
MENACE is a turn-based strategy RPG where players act as a commander of the Republic Marine Corps, in charge of leading a strike force against human and alien threats across several worlds of the dangerous and lawless Wayback system.
With your ship damaged and with communications cut off, the situation is dire indeed, but as the commander, it’s your responsibility to manage your forces, train them, equip them, repair your ship, decide which factions to help, and where and who to fight next, and then to lead your forces to victory in turn-based strategy combat.
The overarching gameplay loop of the game is similar to something one might find in other titles of the genre, such as XCOM, Xenonauts, Battle Brothers, and even Darkest Dungeon: Turn-based strategy combat, where you have to take your troops into battle against a wide assortment of enemies, ever more dangerous and challenging as time goes by. Once the fighting is done, everyone goes back to the Impetus, the crew’s space-faring headquarters, where everything else, from squad management to equipment acquisition, takes place. It’s all very traditional, and MENACE really doesn’t shake up this formula all that much, and I’m perfectly fine with that, because it’s exactly the kind of gameplay I wish it were, with a stronger focus on satisfying combat, with the strategic layer acting more as context and a palate cleanser before the next fight. If the strategic layer acts as the game’s bones, then the meat is certainly the combat. So let’s talk about it!
Satisfying Tactical Combat
The game’s selling point is, by far, the turn-based tactical combat, whose fundamentals are downright excellent, and to me already make MENACE a game worth playing as is. MENACE follows a different formula than games like XCOM and Jagged Alliance, where each part moves a full team, then the opponent moves theirs. Instead, in MENACE, the player picks a unit from the ones in its roster and hands the ball over to the enemy. Then the opponents do the same and so on, until each side has used all available units, and the turn comes to an end.
Units have a limit of action points, and each action removes a certain number of AP from their pool. Once it reaches zero, no more actions can be taken. Units have primary and secondary weapons (each with its own specific settings for what kind of fire they want to employ, like regular shots and suppressing fire), as well as utility items. Movement is exactly like something like XCOM, where each piece of terrain offers a type of cover that ranges from no cover to medium cover and full cover. A fun twist MENACE throws into the mix is the mechanic that each unit has several statuses, and can become suppressed, actively reducing the available AP they have for that turn. This opens a lot of avenues for strategy on the part of the player, but also means that a poorly positioned unit can be suppressed and eliminated quite as easily.
Fortunately, the combat starts relatively easily and progresses in difficulty and complexity. The first missions of the campaign are light in opposition, as opposed to Overhype’s previous title, Battle Brothers, which had no problems throwing players right into the thick of it and having them figure out how to survive. The difficulty curve is a lot smoother this time around, and I’m perfectly fine with that. because there’s a lot of nuance to this combat system.
In MENACE, each battle is randomly generated, so the possibility of repeating an encounter is slim to none, but despite the near-endless possibility of places to fight on, the missions remain the same, so very early on you start to get into a rythm of what a specific type of mission is going to be like, and strategize around that, but I feel that if more vaerity isn’t added during the Early Access stage, these will become predictable and boring after a while. What’s worth having thousands of battlefields, if they’re just small variations with the same end goal?
From what I have played so far of the game, and its previous demo, one of the highlights for MENACE’s turn-based battle system is the amount of weapons and equipment available to experiement with, and how intricately modelled they are, and how the act of squad management and equipping (and even building the squad) is quite a fun part of the formula, but more on that after we talk about the strategic campaign layer.
But before we move on, I want to point out what I consider to be my main criticism of MENACE’s battle system, and that’s its inconsistencies between what you see on the map and what the cover value represents. Plenty of times, you’ll be hovering over a location, considering if you should move your units there, because there’s some debris or something they can hide behind, only to discover that it’s absolutely useless. And sure, some of these things shouldn’t offer that much protection to begin with, but I would like to see a clearer distinction between what’s absolutely no cover, what’s medium cover, and what’s full.
Aside from that visual cue issue, MENACE’s combat is pretty excellent, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s still pretty exciting to see that we were right to be hyped for this one. The addition of armored combat is great and gives the player a lot of mobility (and plenty of challenges to overcome!), the amount of weapons (LMGs, RPGs, mortars, flametrowers, etc.) and possible team compositions is a pool of options that’s too deep to start talking about, MENACE is set to join XCOM and Battle Brothers on the pantheon of great turn-based combats if it’s Early Access stage comes to fruition in the way the team envisions.
Skinny Strategic Layer
I have mentioned in my intro that I don’t mind the fact that the strategic layer of MENACE is quite light, as that has always been the part of most of the games in this genre that I enjoy the least, especially because they tend to be overly done, needlessly complicated, and end up feeling more like a chore than a game. With that being said, I also think that MENACE’s strategic layer, as it is at the moment, might feel a bit underwhelming for some players.
At the moment, once players return to the Impetus, the available options are to select what missions to partake next, what to build on the Impetus, trade on the black market, squad editing, and hiring new squad leaders. The two are a bit redundant, because you’ll be editing your squad on your mission select screen a lot more often than anywhere else. The absence of research, weapon manufacturing, and a clear progression tree to aspire to feels like a missed opportunity. Things like alien artifacts and weapons would have been cool, and unique faction equipment to research and equip as you help them out would be tasteful additions.
On the bright side, what’s here is well done and works great. Upgrading the Impetus is as easy as selecting a location and deciding between the available options. These range from passive abilities that’ll grant you more intelligence for missions, earn more resources, and revive fallen squad members, to more exciting active skills like a missile, a laser turret, air support, and all kinds of helpful stuff. MENACE does this great thing, which is to allow you to customize the Impetus as you want, so you’re not limited to doing just a couple of things, but in different orders. Also, as you gain more favor with each faction, they’ll give you more unlockables for your base, which you can change at any time, provided that you can afford whatever it is you’re trying to build.
The mission selection is as basic as they come; you just pick a planet from those available (sometimes there’s just one), and go on an operation composed of a couple of missions. I’m thinking three missions for each operation. I cannot recall if I have played one that had more than three missions, and sometimes you can pick one from several available missions, based on your status and what kind of challenge you’re willing to take. At the end of each mission, you’re rewarded with looted equipment and resources, which you can then expend on whatever you need.
Resources come slowly in MENACE, and you’ll have to win battles if you want them, because there’s no way to wait for the next influx of credits, or gold, or cash. You have to fight. After all, you’re stranded on a hostage system with no communications. Count on having to play half a dozen missions to be able to afford some decent equipment, and add another dozen on top if you’re looking to acquire some top-tier stuff from the Black Market.
The Black Market is the location in the game where you can go to buy new stuff to equip your squads with. When I mean new stuff, I mean it. There’s no need to buy individual weapon magazines and ammunition, no need to buy grenades or medkits to constantly refill your slots. Instead, you buy weapons, armor, vehicles, and equipment. Once those are yours, they’re consumables that always replenish after every mission. There’s a lot of equipment in MENACE, which is something that always puts a smile on my face. It’s also on the Black Market where you’re going to put out contracts for new recruits to come and join your squads.
In-Depth Squad Management
As previously mentioned in the combat section of MENACE, one of the biggest draws of the game is going to be the squad management aspect of it, which most players of this genre, I assume, tend to enjoy quite a lot. Now, there’s no visual customization, unfortunately, and that feels like a missed opportunity (I love color-coding my squads to know their specialities).
At the start of each campaign you have to pick up 4 squad leaders, which will act as the face of your squad, however each of their squads is composed by several soldeiers, and the greater the amount of soldiers (up to a maxium of 8 plus the squad leader, for a total of 9) a squad has, the more effect it is. Each squad has 17 attributes, and will be progressing and unlocking new perks as you gain promotion points. These perks change based on the chosen squad leaders, and players can start to specialize. In my first campaign attempt, I had a long-range scouting team with extra concealment and increased damage when firing from a concealed position. This same logic applies to pilots, who are the squad equivalent, but for vehicles.
The amount of available equipment in MENACE is going to be a major part of the game’s longevity due to the kind of experimentation it allows for players who love min-maxing their troops. Winning in missions also drops weapons, but you can get some beefy hardware on the game’s Black Market, where you can buy everything from regular infantry rifles to jetpacks for your mechs.
I only have one issue with squad management as a whole, and that’s not knowing which weapon I can and cannot equip on a given vehicle, and the game desperately needs some tooltips on that. I have spent hundreds of credits trying to buy a buggy to equip what I think was some sort of laser gun, but it didn’t fit, so waited a couple of missions and went into combat without a vehicle, which is not ideal by any means, to try and accrue enough credits to buy a new weapon, and that one didn’t work either! No joke when I say that this led me to start a new game because I had then lost way too many squaddies by going under-equipped to combat, and spent all my credits trying to fix the situation. Suffice to say, I found myself between a rock and a hard place, with not enough credits to hire more units to my depleted squads, who were now underperforming for a lack of manpower, because I had spent all my credits trying to equip a vehicle. This way, winning missions became nearly impossible or way too costly to recover from.
Graphics and Sound
MENACE is set in the far future, with a distinct industrial sci-fi aesthetic that’s just my kind of vibe. I’m also extremely happy because a strategy game has decided to go with a more serious and gritty tone, instead of being all colourful and having big-headed units like most games do. The unit models are excellent, the biomes are detailed and follow a consistent artstyle, the animation quality is excellent, weapons look and act menacingly, and sound even pretty damn great.
The only issue I had with the game was the UI, which randomly stopped working and wouldn’t allow me to select anything, but by clicking the tab, it would go to the unit I was supposed to be controlling. Aside from that, all really great stuff.
Final Score: 8.5/10
I think it’s only fair I close out this review by stating that the wait and anticipation for the release of MENACE was worth it. At least, if you’re the kind of player who loves turn-based strategy games. If you are, I sincerely think you just found the best turn-based strategy game of 2026. Looking at the horizon, there are only two games that I think might come close to it, and those will be Star Wars Zero Company and Kriegsfront, and I’m not even sure the latter will come out this year. As it stands right now, MENACE has a strong Early Access start, and everything is going for it to become one of the best turn-based strategy games of the decade, and join its older brother in the pantheon of greatness.
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