A strike on Mars turns violent, and now the labor force of the colony is engaged in outright rebellion against their oppressive employers. That’s the plot of upcoming Mars Tactics, a delicious-looking upcoming tactics game where you run the entire campaign as either the Capital or Labor factions, developing forces and moving them across Mars on a strategic layer in order to fight in turn-based battles across some really deep-looking destructible environments.
There’s a really cool moment in the trailer where a grenade blows a crater in the Martian regolith as it knocks down a fence—and the advancing troops are able to immediately use the crater as an improvised foxhole. It’s the kind of stuff your dreams are made of if you love an XCOM type tactics game.
It also has systems for knocking holes in stuff, as your units can free aim in 360 degrees. The developers’ neat example is shooting a hole in the ceiling to toss a grenade through, arcing it into your enemies outside. To that end bullets are physical objects that have a trajectory, meaning friendly fire—or worse, civilian casualties—is an option. That and almost all objects can be destroyed or busted enough for you to move through.
You can play a short demo of Mars Tactics now, but it’s clearly not the entirety of what it intends to encompass. The full game promises to have elaborate resources like air strikes, artillery, and vehicles on the field. You’ll also be able to move from map to map, with your units retreating from one map to another before ambushing enemy pursuers.
There’s a lot more described on the Mars Tactics Steam page (opens in new tab) where you can also find the demo: It promises an emergent economy, with damage done during battles harming Mars’ fortunes. That’ll tie in to the strategic layer where how you organize your faction’s economy will affect morale and recruitment. The strategy layer will also use a goal-oriented AI that lets the computer make plans and work towards them, knowing when to retreat and when to mass forces for an attack.
Mars Tactics is developed by Takibi Games and published by Hooded Horse (opens in new tab).
