Have we seen the birth of a new turn-based genre recently? In this feature I’d like to explore and possibly give a title to a new genre of turn-based games.
There are three games that have released in the last five years that I believe are a new turn-based genre. The first game, the “originator” (if you will) of this new genre is Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden by the Bearded Ladies. As they describe it the game is “a tactical adventure game combining the turn-based combat of XCOM with story, exploration, stealth, and strategy.” As my favorite game of 2019, I definitely thought the mashup of modern XCOM combat with the stealth, exploration, and resource-gathering of Real-Time Tactics (RTT) games like Desperados III was truly inspiring. It felt new and unique and just a joy to explore the story, characters, and world and then engage in crunchy turn-based combat. I thought this might be just a one-time thing, it was only one developer after all, putting out their first game, like a “one-hit wonder” in music. How surprisingly wrong I was!
First, let’s define the genre’s characteristics using the base gameplay of MYZ. As the Bearded Ladies describe it, “Sneak through shadows to avoid conflict or to catch enemies unaware. Real-time stealth allows you full control of approach: sneak into an enemy camp, position the team of Mutants to your advantage, and gain the element of surprise.” Practically, that means you sneak around the map trying to avoid detection by enemies with detection parameters trying to both collect resources and find the optimal places to both snipe an isolated enemy without detection and set up your “big bang” to open the turn-based combat to the whole group of enemies. It is a fantastic gameplay loop, as you really want to explore every nook and cranny for resources as well as the best way to takeout individual enemies so you don’t have to fight them in the bigger battle. The resources play an essential role as weapons, like a fire bomb for group damage, or in upgrading your character abilities and equipment. It feels a lot like loot hunting and upgrading in CRPGs or the meld mechanic in XCOM: Enemy Within.
Second, the turn-based battles are very familiar to anyone who has played any game described as “XCOM-like.” Now, this description may be getting overused, but we’ll use it here for the sake of brevity and the fact the developers describe MYZ in these exact terms. They describe their combat like this, “dive into a deep, turn-based, tactical combat system inspired by the XCOM games.” This statement is pretty accurate. It uses similar ideas like the double action economy and extra items or upgrades to control the battlefield. You can either move and take an action or not move and the action takes up your entire action. In this way, you have to be very strategic in how you both start the combat, so you can get excellent positioning or ability to move to an excellent position (preferably above your opponents) as well as in the combat itself. MYZ gives you a lot of tools to control the battlefield with upgrades that stun robots or thrown items that stun opponents. With careful thought and planning your characters can avoid most or even all damage. Pulling off that successful ambush and enemy wipe feels incredibly satisfying and keeps you playing.
I think we should pull out the next two games of this genre to highlight the next point: in particular I’m talking about The Miasma Chronicles, also by the Bearded Ladies, and The Lamplighters League, by Harebrained Schemes. As these two titles might suggest, I originally thought this type of game was just what the Bearded Ladies did, like MYZ and Miasma Chronicles were just “Bearded Ladies’ games.” But now with the recent release of The Lamplighters League from a completely different developer, I think a strong case can be made we have a new genre. Both these games, and MYZ as well, show a focus on story and character development that is definitely less of a focus in the XCOM games. As the Lamplighters League site says “Recruit a team of misfits and scoundrels with unique abilities and unforgettable personalities, and chase the Banished Court to the ends of the earth in a mix of real-time infiltration, turn-based tactical combat, and a character-driven story of adventure and intrigue.” As you can see, most of that description hinges on the story and character elements that make this game unique. It’s not XCOM. The team isn’t filled with non-descript classes that you assign a name and personality towards as you progress in the game. They come pre-loaded with background, personality, and a story they interact with as you progress. I think XCOM toyed with these ideas in some set characters in XCOM 2 and then XCOM: Chimera Squad, but it’s not as fleshed out as these games. The Miasma Chronicles really takes the story and characters seriously, as you follow the journey of a young protagonist to save (another) post-apocalyptic world. It definitely feels like the Bearded Ladies have upped their story game from MYZ, however, I think I still prefer the quirky and witty banter of Dux and Borman in MYZ.
One reason I wanted to argue this point is that some of my favorite content creators, like Mortismal Gaming, have called Lamplighters League a TRPG (Tactical RPG). I’ve also seen these types of games called SRPG (Strategy RPG) games. This description isn’t completely wrong, but I think it’s only partially true. TRPG is usually associated with Japanese games like Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics, which we can obviously see are quite different than this group. Western equivalents, sometimes called SRPGs, usually fall under either the CRPG genre, like Wasteland 2&3 and the Divinity Original Sin series, or the XCOM squad-based tactical games. This new genre falls somewhere in between but also wholly separate from these games, given its real-time strategy elements of sneaking and sniping, combined with the turn-based tactical combat. Therefore, I believe it deserves a new genre title.
Now most good titles of genres in this mode are easily made into acronyms, like RTT, RTwP, or TRPG. So, for the first attempt I offer up RTSTBC (Real-Time Stealth with Turn-Based Combat). A bit too long, probably, but on the whole pretty accurate. We could another route like the Metroidvania genre, which combines two pillars of similar games and mashes them together. This seems fitting for this new genre since it is a mashup of RTT and SRPG. So, maybe ShadowCOM, a combination of Shadow Tactics/Shadow Gambit from the fantastic (but soon non-existent) RTT studio Mimimi, and of course XCOM. Lastly, we could go a more simple, but probably more vague route with TBS, or Turn-Based Stealth. In the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter what we call this new genre, but just enjoy that there are games like this to play.