I just realized I had missed the fifth Dev Diary from Overhype Studios about their highly promising strategy RPG, MENACE. Thanks to these updates published on the game’s Steam page, we’ve been learning a wealth of new details about what could be one of the most exciting titles of 2025.
In previous updates, the developers have covered:
- How the Strategy Layer works
- New details about the combat system
- Information on weapons and their associated skills
Today, in this article, I’ll cover the Dev Diary I missed along with the one released today. We’ll be diving into details about Squad Leaders, stats, supplies, and equipment.
Pre-Written Squad Leaders
In Dev Diary #5 the focus shifts to the dynamic role of Squad Leaders, emphasizing their unique contributions to gameplay. As commanders on the battlefield, Squad Leaders (SLs) are integral to the identity and effectiveness of their squads, bringing distinct perks, stats, and personalities to the game.
Squad Leaders serve as the core of each unit, offering more than just tactical leadership. They are pre-written, handcrafted characters with detailed backstories and unique personalities, enhancing player immersion and world-building. Unlike procedurally generated characters, these handwritten SLs provide meaningful interactions, consistent character development, and the possibility of permanent death. Drawing inspiration from titles like Jagged Alliance and Wing Commander, MENACE ensures its characters feel alive, with voiced dialogues and rich individual narratives.
Stats
Each Squad Leader comes with a unique set of stats that define their squad’s capabilities and battlefield performance:
- Action Points (AP): The finite resource for all actions, from movement to skill usage.
- Hitpoints per Element: Determines the squad’s resilience, with damage distributed across individual elements.
- Armor Value: A measure of defensive strength, influenced by equipped armor. Armor durability decreases with successful damage deflections.
- Discipline: Governs suppression resistance, recovery, and morale checks, reducing the chances of a squad becoming panicked or retreating.
- Accuracy: Affects the likelihood of landing successful attacks, modifiable by environmental and tactical factors.
- Detection and Concealment: Opposing metrics that dictate a squad’s ability to reveal hidden enemies or remain undetected. These are influenced by environmental conditions like foliage or cover.
- View Range: Defines the distance a squad can perceive uncovered enemy units.
Adding further depth to Squad Leaders, each begins with a unique starting perk that reflects their individual character and playstyle. This is complemented by a personalized perk tree, which evolves through promotions, offering a blend of character-specific and shared abilities. This system ensures each SL feels distinct, catering to varied tactical preferences and strategies.
The game’s emphasis on character-driven gameplay is also reflected in how Squad Leaders handle adversity. When a squad is eliminated, the leader enters a “bleeding out” state. Timely intervention from allied SLs can stabilize them, preventing permanent death but sidelining them temporarily for recovery. However, the limited number of these written characters means their loss has significant gameplay consequences, emphasizing careful decision-making.
The decision to prioritize written characters over procedurally generated ones underscores the developers’ intent to create a deeply immersive and narratively rich experience. While procedural generation offers endless variety, it often lacks the depth needed for meaningful storytelling or character development. The approach in MENACE strikes a balance between tactical gameplay and narrative engagement, ensuring that each Squad Leader feels irreplaceable.
In future updates, the development team plans to explore Pilots, another critical character type in the game.
While In Dev Diary #6 which is also the latest, the focus shifts to the critical mechanics of the item and supply cost system, which forms the backbone of the game’s strategic depth. Players are given a detailed look at how equipment, armor, and accessories contribute to squad functionality and the dynamic challenges of mission preparation. Here’s what you need to know.
Supplies and Equipment Costs
The game introduces a supply point system that imposes two primary limitations on mission loadouts: the items and leaders you’ve acquired and the mission-specific supply point cap. Every piece of equipment—whether armor, weapons, or accessories—has a supply cost. Your total equipment supply cost cannot exceed the mission’s limit, encouraging strategic decision-making.
Flexibility within the system allows players to manipulate supply points through choices in equipment and tactics. This design aligns with systems used in many popular tabletop games, fostering diverse playstyles and squad customization. Interestingly, enemies also utilize the supply system to “purchase” their units, creating a dynamic difficulty balance. Differences in supply points between your squad and enemy forces can make missions easier or harder, emphasizing planning.
Rationale Behind the Supply System
The supply cost system addresses the challenge of equipment optimization, ensuring that even low-tier gear has a place in the late game. Without this system, players would likely gravitate toward the best available items, reducing variability in setups. By assigning higher supply costs to more powerful items, the game incentivizes diverse loadouts. For instance, equipping a backline mortar squad with basic gear can save points for heavy breach armor on an assault team, supporting varied strategies.
Beyond gameplay, the system is grounded in lore, reflecting real-world logistics. High-tech equipment demands extensive maintenance and resources, making it impractical to deploy such gear ubiquitously. The balance between supply cost and utility mirrors the trade-offs faced in modern military operations.
Armor Mechanics
Armor in MENACE plays a multifaceted role beyond simple protection. It impacts:
- Armor Value: This determines the percentage chance of stopping incoming projectiles, accounting for factors like attack penetration and range.
- Durability: Non-penetrating hits degrade armor, lowering its effectiveness over time. Some weapons specialize in shredding armor, preparing enemies for a decisive strike.
- Accessory Slots: Armor dictates the number of accessories a squad can carry, with lighter armors typically offering more slots.
- Supply Costs: Larger squads incur higher supply costs due to the need to equip more elements.
- Special Abilities: Certain armors include unique features like smoke launchers, laser designators, or thermal imaging, while others may impose penalties such as reduced movement speed.
Accessories and Their Utility
Accessories span a broad range of utility items and gadgets, adding depth to squad customization. Most squads can equip two accessories, though certain armor or perks can increase this number. Accessories can provide passive benefits or grant new skills, offering tactical advantages such as increased ammunition, enhanced concealment, or specialized capabilities like grenade use.
Grenades exemplify the variety in accessories, coming in multiple types with unique effects. Active accessories like single-use rocket launchers or combat drugs provide situational boosts, while some items, such as target designators, are restricted to one per squad for logical consistency.
Players are free to bring multiple copies of active accessories, balancing their utility against supply costs. This flexibility allows for creative strategies, such as outfitting a squad with multiple grenades for overwhelming firepower.
This is everything we know so far about MENACE, the new title from the creators of Battle Brothers, set to launch in Early Access on PC via Steam in Q3 2025. Let me know what you think about it! Ciao
