Genre tags are slippery, fickle things at the best of times, but I feel like each one I use to label Dunebound Tactics almost diminishes it, as I’m sacrificing something precious for the sake of powering on through the arid sands of easily comestible, digestible, poop-estible online content. Ah well, circle of life and all that. Plus, at least it’s thematic: you’ll have to make sacrifices yourself if you want to progress across its unforgiving deserts. This one’s got shades of roguelite, RPG, strategy, and turn-based tactics. Nothing too uncommon, but it’s the shades of Red Faction, Frostpunk, and Sunless Sea that have me interested.
“Lead your band of survivors on a perilous trek across unforgiving sands in search of a new home,” reads the Steam page. “Battle ruthless factions, scavenge dwindling resources, reshape the terrain to your advantage and make life-or-death choices.” It’s that terrain bit that first caught my attention. As you can see from the trailer, battlefields are blown up and reshaped as you play. I’m well up for new threats and opportunities being introduced as fights progress, rather than just being allowed to sit pretty behind a sturdy dustbin.
“Manipulate a fully destructible and reshapable terrain to mold the battlefield and seize the advantage. Unleash devastating abilities and devious tricks to outwit your enemies at every turn—this isn’t your typical cover-and-shoot affair, it’s a relentless test of strategy.” You hear that? Relentless! Utterly without relent.
But what really looks great here is the way it’s all supposed to tie together. You’ll travel in a steamboat-lookin’ caravan, scavenging for resources and solving story events. Along the way, your crew might get wounded. If you’ve got resources to spare, you can heal them, but your caravan has limited space. So, I dunno, maybe Johnny always-gets-shot accidentally falls into the power generator, fuelling the machinery so you can keep chuffing along? If you fail entirely, elements will carry over to your next run – “either in the form of modules, or potentially even survivors, as you find the previous caravan’s wreck.”
This one’s from Terahard, whose previous work includes co-development on Human Fall Flat, with a release date TBC.