A pleasant bit of news to share today: the announcement of Plague Lords: Witch Hunt, the free prologue to Red Unit Studios’ tactical RPG Plague Lords, which is set to arrive by the end of October.
The studio describes it as the first playable chapter in the setting: a small band of mercenaries gets trapped in a plague-stricken barony where the dead don’t stay down, and the prologue walks players through the core systems they’ll use in the full release. The Steam news post confirms the date and that Witch Hunt is a free download.
Witch Hunt focuses on tight, turn-based squad tactics and early settlement foundations. Players command a small squad of trained soldiers, scout infected territories, and manage supplies while establishing an initial camp.
Even at this stage there’s light base-building: you construct and upgrade a military outpost, place barricades and traps, and use crafting structures to support the team.
The prologue exposes three basic crafts, positioned as a subset of the 12 that the main game will feature, alongside a powerful arsenal for a compact, well-armed group.
The main game, Plague Lords, is planned for 2026 and broadens that slice into a turn-based, open-world tactical sandbox.
It blends squad combat with city-building and survival: you grow a tent camp into a fortified town, train leaders and specialists, and field a roster that levels through combat rather than recruitment.
Death and injury are persistent, so losing a veteran hits both the army and the settlement. The Steam page outlines a fairly deep management layer, 40 different buildings, 30 professions from peasants to engineers and commanders, day/night with visibility constraints, hunger and fatigue, and the risk-reward of infected characters who gain advantages but can turn on you.
The world is regenerated each run, with exploration across abandoned cities, farms, monasteries, and fortresses.
Taken together, Witch Hunt reads like a focused vertical slice of the broader design: small-squad turn-based encounters tied to position, traps, and line-holding, plus a first look at camp construction and constrained crafting before the full settlement loop arrives next year.
If you’re curious about how Plague Lords handles tactical pacing and early-game logistics, the October 30 prologue on PC via Steam looks like the right place to start.
