Menace Early Access Review: Great Squad Combat, Dragging Campaign

MENACE enters the long turn-based tactics tradition with a clear structural argument: the squad matters more than the individual soldier. Overhype Studios has built its war game around groups that move, fight, absorb casualties, lose their nerve, and recover as units. That choice gives MENACE a distinct identity from the start, because the battlefield is built around platoon-scale pressure rather than a procession of lone heroes taking turns.

Hooded Horse published MENACE into Early Access on February 5, 2026, and it is available on Windows PC through Steam, GOG, the Epic Games Store, and the Microsoft Store. The strongest reason to pay attention is already present: every tactical decision produces consequences that spread across an entire squad. The problem is that the campaign surrounding those battles does not yet give those consequences an equally persuasive destination.

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The squad is the game’s most important invention

MENACE earns its authority through the way it packages soldiers into functional tactical groups. A squad leader brings between 2 and 8 squaddies, and every squaddie carries a copy of that leader’s chosen weapon and armour. Equipment selection so affects more than one body. It determines the role, firepower, durability, and practical risk profile of an entire unit.

That system makes composition feel weighty without drowning the player in individual inventory management. A larger group puts more bodies and more guns into an encounter, while a smaller unit can occupy a sharper specialist role. The game also permits two-person teams equipped with specialised weapons that fire once regardless of squad size. Those small teams can exploit leader perks that increase morale damage, reduce enemy accuracy, or restore limited ammunition through scavenging. The result is a squad-building system with enough room for clever combinations and meaningful sacrifices.

Character progression supports this structure, though it does so in an unusually abstract way. Leaders gain levels through a shared pool of points, allowing investment in whichever character best serves the current operation rather than rewarding everyone through personal experience totals. Perks are tailored choices rather than traditional classes, which is a sensible fit for a game that wants leaders to define squads instead of locking them into rigid archetypes.

The promotion system is more awkward. Promotions grant only a perk, cost more for characters who already have several perks, and use a multiplier that makes some characters inherently cheaper to develop. That creates a strategic economy, but it can also narrow the field of attractive choices. MENACE wants its roster to feel like a living command structure; too often, its upgrade math encourages efficiency over attachment.

Morale, armour, and explosives give every turn teeth

The tactical layer is where MENACE is at its best. Individual squaddies are modelled separately, so squad health is not merely a single bar representing a crowd. Attacks can strike a particular member. A rocket can eliminate one person, reducing the group’s overall damage output and likely damaging its morale at the same time. Casualties change a unit’s capabilities immediately, which makes positioning and target priority matter from the opening exchange.

Armour reinforces that lethality rather than smoothing it away. It works as a hard barrier: an attack either bypasses the armour and damages the wearer, or it damages the armour and increases the danger that the next strike will penetrate. A well-protected squad has breathing room, not invulnerability. That is a much more satisfying tactical relationship than treating armour as a flat reduction that quietly absorbs every mistake.

Squad size turns this into a real battlefield calculation. Larger squads produce more shots because every individual is represented in the attack model, giving a full-strength team the ability to dominate a lane through volume of fire. The cost arrives quickly. Bigger squads consume more supplies, which function as a per-mission limit on what can be brought into an operation, and explosives or alien substances can inflict horrendous losses on densely populated units. MENACE makes size powerful, expensive, and vulnerable all at once.

Morale is equally consequential. Units can be wavering, pinned, or panicking, and these states shape whether a squad can hold ground or becomes a liability. The oddity is that wavering units can be more exposed and less useful than fully pinned or panicking squads, producing a morale state that feels harsher than its label suggests. Even with that rough edge, the broader system works because suppression, casualties, explosives, and pressure all feed into a shared language of battlefield collapse.

Alternating activations give the model its tempo. One squad acts, then enemy squads answer, turning every advance into a commitment that can be punished before the rest of the force has acted. Movement, shooting, crouching, reloading, and abilities consume Action Points, while held AP can support reactions, overwatch, or a reposition after enemy movement. Cover, flanking, suppression fire, smoke grenades, and explosives are practical tools within that economy rather than decorative abilities on a toolbar.

This is why MENACE’s combat lands so well. A flank is dangerous because it can break armour and tear through a group. Suppression matters because a pinned squad loses its ability to dictate the next exchange. Smoke matters because it breaks lines of sight long enough to move an assault team into a better position. The game understands that turn-based tactics gain tension when survival depends on connected systems instead of raw damage calculations.

The campaign cannot match the quality of the firefights

Outside battle, MENACE combines operations, faction relationships, resource management, equipment upgrades, squad deployment, and fatigue or attrition management. That is the right framework for a demanding tactical campaign. Persistent leaders and limited resources should make a victory costly and a defeat painful. In practice, the larger progression structure has too many points where pressure becomes friction rather than drama.

The operation structure can be especially unforgiving. A bad mission can poison a run, degrading future options until a campaign becomes progressively harder or simply unwinnable. High stakes suit MENACE’s harsh combat model, but the campaign needs stronger tools for recovery and clearer long-term rewards. A punishing game earns its severity when it makes a comeback feel possible; here, a downward slide can feel predetermined.

Faction interaction is the thinnest part of the current loop. More faction missions only appear after every available mission has been completed, while faction missions never conflict with one another. The absence of conflict removes much of the political pressure that faction systems are supposed to create. There are relationships and values to manage, but the decisions do not always force a meaningful choice between competing priorities.

Other campaign frustrations feel similarly mechanical. Hiring another character reduces the morale cap every time, turning roster expansion into another punitive calculation. Mission objectives can require manually moving through designated evacuation zones after the map is already uncontested, and arbitrary turn limits can transform a finished battle into a choreographed cleanup. The game has more than 50 mission types across several planets, yet variety in labels does not always translate into equally satisfying mission resolution.

Character personality and late-campaign narrative momentum also fail to provide the connective tissue that this kind of operation game needs. The late arrival of a villainous faction lacks the build-up required to make it feel like a genuine escalation. MENACE creates excellent reasons to care about whether a squad survives the next exchange, then gives too few equally compelling reasons to care about where the wider campaign is heading.

Early Access value depends on what you need from the campaign

MENACE remains in Early Access as of September 2026. Its roadmap includes more biomes, mission types, equipment, story content, and endgame scenarios, while a full 1.0 release date remains unconfirmed. That context matters because the game’s missing strength is not a minor feature or an isolated menu annoyance. The unfulfilled potential sits in the faction arcs, long-term progression, mission payoff, and campaign ending that are meant to make the tactical layer feel part of a complete war.

The standard Early Access price is $39.99 / £34.99. At that price, MENACE already offers a sophisticated squad combat engine and a meaningful amount of tactical decision-making. Players buying now are paying for a strong combat foundation with an uneven strategic framework attached to it. That can be a fair trade for someone who values tense firefights above all else. It is a less convincing proposition for anyone who expects every operation to build toward a satisfying narrative and progression arc.

Who should buy now, and who should wait

• Buy now if squad composition, alternating activations, armour penetration, morale damage, suppression, and explosive risk are the reasons you play turn-based tactics. MENACE already makes these systems interact with uncommon precision.
• Buy now if you enjoy harsh operation structures where resource limits, casualties, fatigue, and a poor mission can reshape the rest of a campaign.
• Wait if faction choices, character personality, rewarding upgrades, and a reliable late-game resolution matter as much as combat quality.
• Wait if arbitrary turn limits, evacuation busywork, limited upgrade appeal, and campaigns that can snowball into unwinnable territory sound more exhausting than challenging.

Bottom line

MENACE has a combat system worth taking seriously. Its squads feel physical, vulnerable, and tactically distinct because every shot, armour break, casualty, morale state, and explosive blast can alter the next decision. That achievement carries the game a long way, but it cannot permanently cover for shallow faction choices, inconsistent progression, and a campaign structure that loses purpose when it should be gathering momentum.