A tactical RPG where basslines, drum blasts, and riffs replace swords and spells
Sonic Terror has been announced as a turn-based tactical RPG built around a simple idea. The invaders fear music, and the protagonists are the last people still willing to play it.
The studio behind it is Book Burner Games. A team composed of people who have worked on games like Divinity Original Sin, Mount and Blade, King’s Bounty 2, and Men of War, founded by games journalist Peter Salnikov. The publisher listed for the project is Human Qube Games.
Sonit Terror is set in an alternate 1984, inside a totalitarian republic that is already collapsing under a body-snatching alien parasite. Players control an outlaw rock band traveling city to city on a tour that doubles as sabotage. They are young, they clash, and the point is keeping the group together long enough to make the next show.
Every show is a tactical battle on hex-based maps, and the performance is the fight. There are no rhythm inputs and no dice rolls. Sonic Terror leans into planning and execution. Riffs, basslines, and drum strikes function as spells.
The band’s music is treated as brutal magic that can tear through enemies. With three playable musicians, party composition looks tight by design. A smaller roster usually means deeper identity per character, clearer synergies, and sharper consequences when someone goes down.
Sonic Terror mixes tour logistics with survival-style upkeep. The band needs food, sleep, and basic care, and the game tracks sobriety and inspiration alongside staying alive.
A tour story works best when momentum has a cost, and the band is always one bad night away from spiraling. The game also leans on personality shaping, so the friction between bandmates is part of how the run of shows holds together.
One of the more specific promises is an adaptive soundtrack. The music grows stronger as you succeed and fades when you get hit. If the soundtrack is literally tied to performance, then damage and setbacks can become something you hear as well as see, which fits the theme of a world trying to enforce silence.
The tour itself starts on a bus with a mysterious driver, and the storyline unfolds across the trip as the band digs into the truth behind the invasion while pushing back against the regime.
Gear upgrades are part of the loop, too, with alien tech affecting instruments and equipment.
The game is in development for PC via Steam, with console versions planned for later. I share the announcement trailer below.
