MENACE Preview: A Hint of Great Combat to Come

MENACE is an up-coming tactical, turn-based strategy game that focuses on realistic combat. Developed by Overhype Studios and published by Hooded Horse, MENACE is an indie game with a strong team behind it. The game combines realistic characters and settings with strategic battle planning that rewards careful movement and a lot of planning ahead.

The demo for MENACE is currently available on Steam, and fans can expect the full release on February 5, 2026. It is an immersive and grim take on the tactics genre, making it stand out from the crowd.

Gameplay: Getting Ready for Combat

Since the demo doesn’t have a story at all, let’s dive into the gameplay first instead. MENACE is 100% focused on combat, dropping you into a very complicated load-out screen at the jump.

The demo is all about fighting pirates; you have several possible goals in the one map currently available. Some examples are getting rid of a percentage of pirate groups or destroying objectives. After taking into account the weather, the objective, and the map, you need to build your team.

The map with objectives, load outs, and everything you need to know before missions.

You get a map and a little bit of idea of what it will hold, giving you the chance to choose which weapons will go to which group of units. The demo is pretty limited; you basically need to take all your units, and you only have just enough guns for them.

However, you do get to choose which units get upgrades with a handful of Promotion points you are given, allowing you to add some defense or better aiming to a couple of your units. These Promotions are symbolized by embroidered patches as if they are being sewn to a uniform, which is a nice touch.

The upgrade system for troops is in the demo, but it looks like there will be plenty to more in the full game. Next up, you can give your units a secondary gun like a rocket launcher or sniper rifle, and give them an inventory item that gives them a boost in combat. 

Combat: On the Ground

Once you have your load out done, you can begin combat. As this is a turn-based strategy game, you will take turns moving, ducking for cover, attacking, and using special attacks. In the demo, you only take on pirates, but there will be more enemies in the full release.

Action Points in Battle

Unlike Warhammer 40k, you don’t move with one set of energy points then attack in a second phase; instead, everything you do pulls from the same pool of energy points. In the demo, before troops are upgraded, this mostly means that your entire turn will be either moving or attacking twice. 

A night mission in MENACE has you destroying IEDs.

Each person starts with 100 AP, and it costs 20 to duck into cover, 20 to get up from cover, about 40 points to shoot your weapons, up to 80 points for special weapons, and about 20ish points to move from square to square. It is very reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons combat turns; you can basically choose to attack twice, move a little than attack, or move double. 

This is fairly limiting, and some war game players might find this type of combat to be lackluster. It really depends on how you feel overall about action pool sharing and whether you enjoy the freedom of a single pool or the strategy needed for separate pools.

Suppression, Wavering, and Running

When you are in battle with an enemy unit, you have several meters you need to keep tabs on. As you fire at an enemy or they fire at you, you will have a life meter, a suppression meter, and an armor meter.

There is one vehicle unit that you can deploy in the demo.

Once the life meter has run out, that unit will get a medic marker; other teammates can come by and heal them. There is also a suppression meter, which forces that unit to take aggressive cover, limiting their ability to move. Armor meters can be destroying in one hit by some guns like sniper rifles and explosives.

The suppression meter is an interesting touch that makes the combat feel even more realistic. It is something that can be overcome with timing, firepower, and regrouping, and it adds another layer of interest to the game. 

Wavering and running are also interesting; if a unit takes too much damage, they can lose faith in their cause and flee combat. You lose control of that unit, or the pirates remove themselves from combat in hopes of making it out alive. It sucks to lose a unit, but you know to take better care of your Marines in the next go round. 

No Tutorial in the Demo

There is a lot of things going on with your troops, the pirates, and symbols on the screen. Since the demo has no tutorial, this can be pretty overwhelming for anyone new to the genre. Here’s hoping that the full game has an optional tutorial for those that need it.

However, MENACE is pretty good at tutorializing itself. All the icons have scroll over text to help inform you of what you are doing. While you may be confused on your first try or two, the game is excellent at giving you all the information you need to continue learning.

Being in cover is one of the best ways to survive, so you will spend a lot of time there.

Each Map is Random

Every time you enter the fray, MENACE will deliver you a whole new map to ponder over. This means a lot of good things, and some bad things for players. 

Random maps help to keep the same content fresh, giving more replay value to the game. However, some of the maps are far easier than others. Many of the maps you will come across in the demo are wide-open spaces with little cover, meaning your Marines can be sitting ducks if you come across a truck with far-reaching lasers on its back. 

A map in MENACE shows that some don’t have very much cover where you need it most.

Overall, the maps can be challenging in a good way, but sometimes you find yourself with no cover and nowhere to go. You can’t move without exposing yourself, and the enemy is in cover, preventing you from loading them down with suppressing fire. 

These situations take a lot of patience and some loss of life, which is disheartening. Marines dead or severely injured on one mission can’t be taken with you on the next mission, and it leaves you severely handicapped.

Graphics and Sound Design: A Study in Immersion

MENACE looks beautiful. While the only map available in the demo is a sand-filled desert with the occasional giant rock or building to hide behind, there is an element of care that is evident in every pixel. The graphics aren’t 3D or intricate; they aren’t taxing on your gaming system. But Overhype Studios did a lot with a little.

The isometric nature of MENACE, coupled with the unmoving character portraits could have made the game look cheap. But there is something really impressive about the amount of detail in each thing that gives life to otherwise flat worlds.

The upgrades menu has these neat icons with embroidered badges for each upgrade, showing the depth of detail in MENACE.

A great example of this is the ship that drops you off in the middle of the desert in the beginning of each level. The developers put a lot of design into the beautiful logos painted on the side of these carriers, and it gives a lot of realism and beauty to a world that could have easily been cheap looking.

Sound Design and Music

The sound design is thoughtful; you get a lot of characterization in the voice lines for each character. Each gun has several different sounds it can make while shooting, and there are explosive sounds and voice lines from enemies too.

It could easily have been an overwhelming slop of too-quiet audio mixed with ear-blasting explosives, but the sound mixing was done well. There is a nice undercurrent of dramatic music that runs constantly in the background, topped with occasional voice lines equal with the noises of combat.

So Evil, They’re Silly

One thing that was a little jarring while playing was some of the voice lines. The pirates laugh at civilians while they bleed, giggling while blowing up people running for their lives. The Marines also seem to take some joy in killing others, but it mostly feels like normal human banter.

MENACE goes through great lengths to inform you that the evil pirates are total the most evil they can possibility be. It’s a cartoonish level of evil; they didn’t have to make them sound like a Disney villain to make them an enemy worth taking down. 

Time to take some pirates down.

In spite of the issues in the demo, this is a tactical game to look forward to. If you enjoy turn-based strategy with real-world weaponry and boots-on-the-ground Marines as your protagonists, you will love MENACE.

This MENACE Preview on PC was made possible thanks to Hooded Horse.