Phantom Brigade
Phantom Brigade is a turn-based tactics video game originally developed by Tetragon Works, but currently being developed by Brace Yourself Games after they acquired the indie studio. It released in early access on Epic Games Store on November 16, 2020, and is planned to release on Steam for its 1.0 release. The premise of the game is that the player commands a squad of mechs who obtained a secret prototype weapon that lets them see briefly into the future. The game plays out in a semi-real-time manner with turns being separated into segments of a  few seconds each. The player can predict what happens during these turns and set up moves that then play out in real time. Development. The game was first announced at PAX West 2017. The game's developers decided that the game would not be fully turn-based and play out in real time, in order to "capture that energy you get in a mech anime [...] but have that actually be the gameplay", according to the game's creative lead and designer, Adelaide Jenkins. She stated that while she found games like "Front Mission 4" to be "hype" in their cutscenes , the gameplay was "very much traditional turn-based". The game features procedural damage for both the environment and mechs (based on direction). Reception. Luke Plunkett of "Kotaku" compared the game to a hybrid of "XCOM" and "MechWarrior Tactics", saying that it "looks amazing" and that he was "excited to see how this giant mechanical ballet looks after a few more months". Mike Williams of "USgamer" stated that he initially compared the game to "Front Mission" due to its turn-based gameplay, a comparison that the developers agreed with. Saying that "god dammit, I want more mech strategy games", he called  Phantom Brigade the highlight of the PAX West 2019 show. Alex Connolly of Wargamer.com called the game "what we've all been pining for since Square Enix dropped the ball by a) not officially releasing "" in the West and b) allowing "Front Mission Evolved" to be, well, "Front Mission Evolved"".