Remember Ultimate Space Commando? That Team’s Back With Mythswayer, and It’s Wild
I just played the demo of the brand-new title that indie outfit Angry Cat Studios is working on, the same team many strategy buffs will remember for the 2015 tactical RPG Ultimate Space Commando.
The new project, Mythswayer, is a tactical RPG that introduces some genuinely fresh mechanics, especially when it comes to reshaping the battlefield around your hero and enemies. Let me break down the key points.
A quick disclaimer: these impressions come from the Steam demo, so plenty could change before launch.
In the demo, you step into the robes of a wizard. Still, the final game will open up additional classes like paladin, warrior, and hunter among them, and its progression system promises the freedom to build your character exactly the way you want.
You can mash up a beefy warrior with spell-casting tricks, or flip the script by loading a mage with melee perks, because every level-up lets you drop earned points into any attributes or skills you want.
The demo has you roam the countryside on your way to a house perched on a hill. Exploration happens on square-grid maps where your hero can move, vault obstacles, and literally carve new routes to higher ground or otherwise unreachable spots.
That terrain-shaping twist is one of the project’s standout ideas, and I can’t recall seeing it handled quite like this anywhere else. We’ll get into the details in a moment.
As for combat, Mythswayer sticks to classic turn order: you act with your character first, then every enemy on the field takes a turn. The demo’s roster ranges from human fighters to fantasy beasts. I bumped into goblins, skeletons, and bow-wielding archers.
Every movement and every skill burns Tempo, the core resource for taking any action, while spellcasting also draws from its own linked pool.
Your character has three primary attributes: Vigor, Finesse, and Arcana, which you can upgrade at each level-up; these, in turn, boost secondary stats such as Tempo, HP, magic shield, physical shield, and so on.
You’ll also unlock new skills as the hero levels. In the demo, my mage started with a melee strike, Arcane Bolt (a ranged projectile I leaned on heavily), and an Arcane Shield. Dedicated points let you shape your build exactly the way you want.
The real game-changer, though, is the Arcane Tome. For every section of the map you explore, this book reveals the environmental elements you can manipulate.
For example, you can raise columns to create a bridge to higher ground, remove a support to drop debris and hinder, or even damage enemy units, or clear a blockage to reach a hidden chest.
All of this works through the tome and its inks, you’ll quite literally play the painter, mixing blue and red pigments to reshape the world. As you advance, the tome unlocks new objects you can conjure onto the grid, a mechanic that feels both distinctive and fresh.
Angry Cat Studios says they’re doubling down on this feature, adding more ink colors and making it a deep, core pillar of the game’s strategy.
Items, weapons, and even the maps themselves will be procedurally generated. Gear comes in multiple rarity tiers for each new run, and the Reliquary system provides meta-progression by letting you stash and reuse unique items in future play-throughs.
The demo’s controls feel a bit stiff. Keep in mind this is an early build, and the game is designed for a gamepad, while I played on keyboard and mouse. What really won me over, check the screenshots I grabbed, is the slick, well-executed UI.
The in-game menus, art style, and the character screen with its gear slots all look sharp, and the battle maps show plenty of promise.
Development is lean, lead programmer Aliza and junior designer Csaba publicly demoed the prototype this week, and the team plans to roll out a feature-complete Early Access build by year’s end.
The new Steam demo, released yesterday alongside a request for wishlists, already showcases diorama-style arenas, core turn sequencing, and the first taste of ink manipulation, giving you a practical preview of how the full rogue-lite loop will feel.
