I've called XCOM brutal for years. It used to feel brutal. Brutal when a 95% shot misses. Brutal when a beloved soldier eats a crit and dies instantly. Brutal when it drops you on a knife edge, daring you to save the world as everything slowly spirals out of control. Menace, a new strategy game from Battle Brothers creator Overhype Studios, lives almost entirely on that same knife edge but unlike XCOM, it never lets you step back onto solid ground. There's always another fight to win, another compromise to make, and never quite enough resources to recover from the last deployment.
The biggest resource in Menace is manpower, and every misplay or mistake will cost you it. Here is a sci-fi game that riffs on Starship Troopers and Aliens, casting as the commander of a doomed ship that's jumped through a one-way gate to a far-off cluster of planets. With depleted resources and several competing factions to appease, you'll have your work cut out as you tackle mission after mission to try and keep the peace.
