Over the years, there have been a few games that I keep coming back to over the years as they have continued with new releases. One of those is XCOM which was first released in 1994. I spent hours and hours playing it as well as its sequels. Jagged Alliance was another series I enjoyed playing as well though I did not begin playing it until 1999 with Jagged Alliance 2. What I liked about these games was that they combined turn-based tactics with a strategic layer. There have been many other games of this genre since that time. However, I am excited about an upcoming new game that combines the best features of these two series and takes them to the next level: Warhounds.
What is Warhounds?
Warhounds is a turn-based tactics & strategy game about a mercenary squad with an old-school action-movie vibe. Command an elite team of bold, stylish operators, wage a campaign in an alternative-future Africa, and decide the war’s outcome mission by mission. In this game you get to be the commander. Calculate lines of fire, flank and break cover, and seize the high ground. Every turn is decided by your planning and honest physics – not by a random number generator. As you play, you will hire fighters with personality. Combine classes -Assault, Specialist, Sniper, Machine Gunner, and Grenadier. Pick the right gear for the job, treat and extract, protect key operatives. Take calculated risks – high combat lethality makes every decision count. Between missions, you run the base. Recruit, upgrade, purchase equipment, handle logistics, finances, medical, and downtime. Choose allied factions, build relationships, gather intel, and execute covert ops. Your choices have consequences – access to missions, gear, and allies changes because of what you do. This game is set in the battlefield of today and tomorrow. Deploy drones, combat scanners, smoke, and optical camo. Upgrade and improve your kit to win under any conditions. Finally, you get to set the pace of the game. Knock out a mission in 25 – 40 minutes or settle in for longer sessions. You can also set the level of challenge from light and relaxing to brutal tactical nightmare.
Game Play
I had the opportunity to run through a play test version of Warhounds along with the recently released demo. The start of the game puts you right into a firefight and also acts as a tutorial that teaches you not only the commands of how to play the game, but also how the combat works with three unique characters. After this, you ease your way into the strategic layer by arriving at a base on a ship that you had to commandeer as a second mission. For the demo and playtest, the seaborne base only lets you explore the Helipad screen where you put together a team of mercenaries for the next mission and then send them into battle for a third mission that ends the experience for these early releases.
Though there is not much of the strategic level available in what I have played, the tactical portion of the game has a lot of great things going for it. Warhounds uses a 3-D isometric view which you can rotate 360 degrees. There are also multiple floors for many of the structures. Characters behind cover receive defensive bonuses and some cover is destructible. When taking control of a character the spaces to which they can move are bordered by blue lines to show how far they can move using one action and then yellow for their second action. This allows a character to move and then perform another action such as firing. When firing a weapon, the game provides a percentage chance of getting a hit. This is based on the cover the target is behind as well as other objects between the shooter and the target. By moving to flank a target so they don’t have cover, you can increase your chance to hit up to 100%!
In addition to shooting, you can also set up overwatch where your character spends their remaining action to setup a cone of spaces so that the first enemy who performs an action within those spaces is fired upon. Sometimes if an enemy is in cover, use overwatch to fire at them as they move away from cover. Characters will need to spend an action to reload their weapon when their clip is empty. They can also use actions to heal wounded allies or throw a grenade. Later in the game as characters have skills, they can add additional actions such as attacking with a knife. After the player uses all of their characters’ actions, the enemy moves. They use the same rules in that each enemy gets two actions where they can move, shoot, and even setup their own overwatch.
Play the Demo
Warhounds is developed by Everplay DMCC and published by Brightika, Inc. A demo was just released on Steam. The game will be available for PC on Steam and released during the Spring of 2026. I enjoyed playing through the missions in the demo and playtest and really look forward to the release of the complete game. If you like turn-based tactical games or are looking to play something different than what you are used to, then I recommend giving Warhounds a try. I warn you that after playing the demo, you will be hooked.
Check out the Warhounds page on Steam for more information and to download the demo.
Take a look at the gameplay trailer for Warhounds.
