Menace isn’t XCOM — Hooded Horse turns squads into small armies and it changes everything

Why Menace grabbed my attention (and why it might change how you think about turn-based tactics)

This caught my attention because Menace arrives at a moment when every new tactical game immediately gets shoved into the XCOM comparison machine. Play a few missions of Hooded Horse’s early-access strategy title and it becomes obvious: those comparisons are polite shorthand, but they miss the point. Menace deliberately abandons XCOM’s tight, surgical, character-driven firefights in favor of something louder – think Company of Heroes if it had watched too many Starship Troopers movies and decided it wanted to be turn-based.

• Scale over granularity: squads are basically mini-armies, not tight strike teams.
• Bombastic missions and open maps push focus-fire and spectacle rather than stealth and single-soldier heroics.
• Early access polish is uneven – the core idea is interesting, but attachment and balance still need work.

Breaking down the difference: Menace vs. the usual XCOM shorthand

XCOM comparisons are natural: both games are turn-based, both offer cover mechanics and both put you in command of human troops versus alien or monstrous threats. But the similarity ends at the wrapper. XCOM revels in scarcity and consequence – every soldier matters and the map is a murder board of angles, lines of sight and single-turn gambits. Menace scales that up. Your “squad” can contain multiple soldiers under a single named leader (the build I played lets a named character bring up to eight troops). That turns many encounters into centroid battles where focus fire and massed abilities matter more than surgical flanks.

Mechanically, that shift changes the center of gravity. Menace’s missions feel cinematic: holding sector objectives, surviving waves, and hunting down high-value targets across expansive, open terrain. Instead of creeping through rooms and waiting for the perfect grenade, you’re often lining up concentrated volleys and sweeping abilities to chew through enemy hordes. It’s satisfying in a different way — more like commanding a platoon in a sci-fi flick than babysitting a fragile strike team.

Where the spectacle helps, and where it hurts

The big wins are immediate. Combat has punch. Firepower matters and the game rewards aggressive positioning and prioritizing targets. The open maps give space for tactical variance — you can encircle or entrench, call in heavy weapons, and watch the battlefield swing in dramatic arcs. The visual language sells the fantasy: you feel powerful in a way XCOM rarely lets you.

But that power comes with trade-offs. The emotional weight of losing a soldier is diluted when squads are nine people deep. Hooded Horse has worked to give troops personality — they’re voiced and distinct — but in practice I found myself shrugging when I cycled through replacements. That reduces the kind of heart-in-the-mouth, permadeath drama XCOM fans prize. There were moments where the AI or UI felt rough in this early build, and the balance sometimes tilted toward spongy enemies that need raw output rather than clever play.

What this means for players and the genre

If you want a straight XCOM clone, Menace will frustrate you. If you’re open to a different flavor of turn-based combat — one that emphasizes spectacle, massed tactics and the joy of focus fire — this is worth a look. Hooded Horse’s decision to scale up the unit counts and mission scope is a design choice that opens fresh strategic questions: how do you manage attrition at scale, when does suppression beat mobility, and how do special abilities interplay when multiple soldiers can concentrate on a single threat?

For the studio, early access is the right move. There’s a clear core loop that entertains, and the community can help tune attachment, balance, and UI clarity. I want to see deeper progression systems that make each soldier feel indispensable even in large squads, and smarter enemy design that forces more than just brute-force responses.

TL;DR — The short, honest verdict

Menace reframes the tactical template: it’s less about stealthy duels and more about cinematic, large-scale squad warfare. In early access it’s a mixed bag — the core spectacle is genuinely fun, but the emotional stakes and polish lag behind. If you want a power-fantasy, massed-tactics experience, keep an eye on Menace. If you need the soul-crushing, single-soldier tension of classic XCOM, this one intentionally walks a different path.