It joins the growing lineup of sandbox open-world tactical RPGs, Tattered Banners, announced just a few hours ago by CookieByte Entertainment, a studio many players will remember for another intriguing project from a few years back, Fort Triumph.
This new project pitches itself as a mercenary company tactics RPG, but the real hook is the strategic layer. It is not just a map you move across to find fights. It is a simulated medieval fantasy realm where cities, noble houses, trade, and shortages keep running while you operate inside it.
You can raid caravans, bribe guards, smuggle goods, torch farms, spy on lords, assassinate targets, or help lay siege.
Those actions are meant to carry consequences that spread. Burn a farm, and the game expects knock-on effects like famine, refugees, and a stronger bandit presence. Keep trade routes safe, and you get the opposite outcome, with settlements growing, fielding larger forces, and projecting influence into neighboring territory.
That is where the Wartales comparison lands. Wartales is a tight mercenary loop built around travel, contracts, supplies, and tactical encounters, with a world that reacts in limited but readable ways. Tattered Banners sounds like it wants the same company management fantasy, but with a more systemic “living realm” model driving the stakes.
The pitch is basically saying the map is the source of new problems, new opportunities, and new battle contexts. Every decision is a lever that can tilt stability, economics, and faction power, which then changes what kinds of tactical missions even exist.
The Battle Brothers comparison is more about tone and structure than presentation. Battle Brothers thrives on emergent stories from a harsh sandbox, where fights, injuries, and contracts create scars that define a run.
Tattered Banners aims for that same sense of run-specific narrative, but it is leaning harder into simulation as the storyteller. The interesting wrinkle is how it gates player options. Instead of handing out a clean skill tree and calling it “progression,” it ties certain interactions to discovery and conditions in the world.
You do not just buy “caravan raiding” as a perk. You learn it because the simulation creates a lucrative target, and you are in the right place to hear about it, then a bandit leader teaches you the trick.
You do not click “poison wells” from a menu. A forest witch reveals it when settlement expansion starts pushing into her land. That is a very Battle Brothers way to make the world feel indifferent and opportunistic, while still giving you new tools over time.
Battles are shaped by where they happen, what relationships your company has with noble houses, and what has already happened in the realm. So a fight is not just “enemy squad on a generic field.” It is meant to be downstream of earlier choices, and its result feeds back into the balance of power.
If Tattered Banners pulls that off, it could sit neatly between Wartales’ mercenary campaign structure and Battle Brothers’ emergent brutality, but with a bigger emphasis on systemic cause and effect.
For sure, a game I will keep following. It will arrive in early access sometime in Q4 2026 on PC via Steam. In the meantime, there’s a plan for some playtests, and you can already submit for them. Below is the announcement trailer.
