New Menace trailer shows off the sci-fi skirmishes that the Battle Brothers creators are making next

The 2024 PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted has brought us a new trailer for Menace, the sci-fi turn-based tactics game from Battle Brothers developer Overhype Studios. In Menace you'll control a sci-fi military strike force hopping between worlds to answer distress calls calling for protection from pirates, rebels, warlords, and worse—a mysterious alien threat that threatens them all, friend and foe alike.

The trailer shows a variety of different units for the main faction, the Republic Marines, as they defend a colony settlement from a band of marauding pirates. I say defend, but despite their extremely cool battle armor, mixed-weapon squads, light armored vehicles, fire support, and sick armored mech they're definitely on the losing end and outnumbered as things go on. The pirates have a variety of pretty cool insurgent weapons ranging from proper military equipment to big weapons scavenged and refitted onto up-armored civilian vehicles.

The trailer shows the kind of brutal tactical action you'd expect from the Battle Brothers developers—units with personality, but not so much that you'll cry every time they die. (They're gonna). Of particular note is how units take dynamic cover, XCOM-style, against terrain that they rub up against after moving—you can see a great moment of it in action as a squad of marines runs up a road before spreading to both sides of it for cover against the fences that run alongside it.

You can find Menace on the Overhype Studios website, via publisher Hooded Horse, and directly on Epic and Steam.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.