MENACE Wiki

MENACE

MENACE is a turn-based tactical RPG developed by Overhype Studios, the team behind Battle Brothers, and published by Hooded Horse. It launched in PC Early Access on February 5, 2026. The game is set in the isolated Wayback System, a backwater cluster of planets where pirate gangs, corporations and fractured planetary governments fight over what is left, and where a biomechanical alien threat called the MENACE has begun to spread. The player commands the crew of the carrier TCRN Impetus, a mixed force of marines, mercenaries and criminals, running multi-mission Operations across the starmap rather than a single linear campaign. Battles are squad-scale and action-point driven: named Squad Leaders command infantry squads of up to eight squaddies with their own weapons and perk trees, while Pilots bring tanks, troop carriers and bipedal walkers. Between missions the campaign layer covers promotions, faction trust, logistics and OCI modules that install persistent upgrades on the ship.

• Squad-Scale Turn-Based Combat - Fights are fought on large map-scale battlefields with action-point driven movement, facing, cover and overwatch. Squad Leaders and Pilots are the only units that carry a name and a perk tree; the squaddies under them are the expendable rank and file.
• Squad Leaders and Pilots - Squad Leaders command infantry squads of up to eight squaddies and carry a unique weapon and a unique starting perk. Pilots command vehicles such as tanks, armored personnel carriers and bipedal combat walkers, and are incapacitated rather than killed when their vehicle is destroyed.
• Operations and the Starmap - Campaign progress runs through Operations, which are multi-mission chains fought on a planet of the Wayback System. Missions inside an Operation are drawn procedurally, so the order and map set change between runs, and the starmap shows which factions hold which planetary bodies.
• Promotion Points and Perks - Primary and secondary mission objectives award Promotion Points, which are spent on each character's perk tree. A character's unique starting perk is unlocked from the start and defines its niche.
• Faction Trust and OCI Modules - The seven Wayback factions track trust. Trust unlocks OCI modules, persistent ship upgrades that can be installed permanently, and destroyed factions take their OCI unlocks with them.
• Logistics, Dropoff and Attrition - Every weapon added to a squad or vehicle costs logistics capacity, and weapons suffer dropoff, a diminishing effectiveness over distance. Crew and vehicles carry between missions, so losses compound across an Operation.
• The MENACE Threat - The MENACE is a biomechanical alien force that starts attacking planets once it is encountered. If it conquers every planet the campaign ends in a game over, and anti-MENACE stratagems plus the Operations layer are the tools used to hold it back.