Every Day We Fight is out now in Early Access on Steam, and it is already looking to redefine the turn-based tactics genre. They have quite the team behind this one, too, including Christopher Odd, who has made turn-based tactics his livelihood on YouTube.
We got a chance to play the Early Access version. Let’s take a look and see how things are looking so far.
In this article, I go over the following topics.
Story
You are playing as a small team of freedom fighters who have banded together to fight the alien threat. Everyone in the city was frozen in time when the aliens arrived, except for your freedom fighters.
They were not completely unaffected, though. They are stuck in a seemingly endless loop. Every time they die, they must start over again. You must use the skills that they develop over each run to break the loop and save the world.
Gameplay
Every Day We Fight is a mix between real-time exploration, turn-based tactics, and roguelite strategy.
All three elements play a big role in the game. From the very beginning, the game starts to blur the lines between turn-based and real-time in several ways. Not just in combat versus exploration. Let’s talk a little bit about these three elements and how they work together.
Exploration
When you are not in combat, your team is free to roam the city to gather scrap and find secret locations. You might even want to take the time to locate all the manholes. This will make it easier to get around the city via fast travel through the sewers.
Some of the locations and secrets may not be accessible to you immediately. Later in the game, you will unlock special tools that will help you get to those additional locations that seemed impossible before.
Exploring is an important part of the game. You will want to make sure that you gather enough scrap to craft any weapon attachments you might need for your team.
These include things like stocks, scopes, and barrels. You can also craft things like medkits and grenades as needed. Scrap is not an overly abundant resource, though, so make sure you are only crafting the things that you need the most.
Another important thing to look for while exploring is the weapon stashes. Again, not all of these are readily available at the beginning.
You will be able to unlock more over time. The weapon stashes will be an invaluable way to improve your team. The new weapons and accessories that you find at weapon stashes will be unlocked and available to your team in the following runs.
Combat
Now that you have explored a bit and loaded your team up with the best equipment you could get your hands on, let’s discuss what the combat in Every Day We Fight looks like.
At first glance, it looks like most of the other turn-based tactical games out there. Your team goes, then the enemy goes, rinse and repeat. However, upon closer examination, several factors make it stand out.
Every Day We Fight uses an action point system. You use your action points to move, shoot, reload, and hold your breath.
You are free to use these actions in any order you choose and as much as you want, as long as you have the action points for them. Up to five unused action points can even be carried over to the following turn.
Now, the things that make Every Day We Fight’s combat stand out are the aiming system and the reflex actions. These two go hand in hand a lot of the time. We’ll start with aiming. Then the reflex actions, and you will see how they work together.
The aiming is first-person and in real-time. This means that each time you go to shoot with one for your characters, you will be looking down the barrel or scope of the weapon to aim at the enemy you want to shoot.
It also means that there are no percentages to hit and that cover only affects the line of sight. So, if the enemy decides to hide behind low cover and their head is still visible, then you can still line up that perfect headshot with your sniper rifle.
You can even hold your breath to zoom in and make sure your bullet hits its mark. Although that means the enemy can also do the same to you. Which means you need to pick your cover carefully.
Reflex actions come into play as a reaction when you are shooting at the enemy or they are shooting at you.
Reflex actions are a very interesting mechanic because they allow the target of an incoming attack a chance to reposition to better cover. So, even if the enemy was able to move around and flank you, you still have a chance to run to better cover if you want.
However, since aiming is in real-time, you can still get hit or hit your target while they are trying to run away.
Certain abilities can be used in place of a reflex action, such as Overwatch. With the real-time aiming system, even Overwatch is a little bit different in Every Day We Fight.
When an enemy triggers your Overwatch, you can choose whether you want to use it on that enemy or wait for a different one to trigger it. An even more interesting feature of Overwatch is that you don’t have to shoot the enemy that triggered your Overwatch.
Since it is free aim, there is nothing stopping you from shooting a higher-priority target that is also in your line of sight.
Just be careful using your reflex action with things like Overwatch. Most characters only get one reflex action per round.
The enemy is aware of this and won’t shy away from throwing a grenade in the direction of someone who has already used up their reflex action.
Just make sure that you use the reflex action at the right time. Is it better to get an extra shot off or be able to reposition to take less damage from incoming fire?
Roguelite
So, you did everything you could, and the enemy still took out your little squad of freedom fighters. Now what? Every Day We Fight always gives you one chance to load from the last checkpoint per run if you would like.
Otherwise, you have to start a new run from your hideout in the sewers. You will lose all your weapons and accessories. The only thing that carries over is your scrap and your character’s experience points.
Each run, you will start with three random weapons in your hideout for your team. These weapons are generated from the pool of weapons that you have unlocked so far in the game.
You might also start with some accessories such as grenades, bandages, and/or weapon attachments. You will need to do the best you can with the weapons provided.
The roguelite part of the game creates an interesting element that really tests a player’s tactical skills. Instead of sticking with the perfect build for each character the whole game, you are forced to use your skills as a tactics player.
Will you be able to take advantage of the character skills and the weapons you have on hand, regardless of what they may be?
Characters
The last element I wanted to touch on in this preview is the characters. Each character in your group has an interesting backstory that you learn as the game goes on.
They will have side conversations to get to know each other more because none of them knew each other before the invasion. It’s a nice way to pass the time while you’re running around and exploring the city.
The experience points and skills that you unlock for your characters are one of the only things that carry over from run to run.
That means you will at least have that as a constant for building your combat strategies. The developers were quite generous, though. They wanted to allow you to experiment.
As a result, you are able to completely reset your skill points and go down a different skill tree each run if you would like. This is a nice feature that allows you to find that perfect combination of skills for your playstyle.
You can tell that there is a focus on using your freedom fighters as a team. Many skills in Every Day We Fight are designed around chaining things together between your characters.
One character has an ability that allows them to fire at a weakened enemy that one of the other characters was shooting at. Another allows you to pass action points to other characters on the team.
These, and other skills, can then be further enhanced to make teamwork even more beneficial. Such as getting a free reload after shooting the same target or healing the teammate who got the additional action points. Feel free to experiment and see what skills work best for you.
Support
Lastly, I wanted to mention how active the developers are with this game. There have been frequent updates to stability and bug fixes since day one of Early Access.
They post all the notes on their Steam page for each update. The developers are listening to the community. Even after the first gameplay video on Christopher Odd’s YouTube channel, the team has been making changes based on community feedback.
Conclusion
There are many interesting elements in the game so far. It has been a nice change of pace in the turn-based tactical genre. I am excited to watch this game through Early Access and into its final release.
If you are interested in sticking around to see what comes of Every Day We Fight, feel free to check out their Steam page and wishlist the game. You can also buy that game in Early Access and start playing it right away at its current state.
One of the developers, Christopher Odd, has a Let’s Play of the Early Access build on his YouTube channel, which you can also check out for additional information.
A key was provided by the developers at Signal Space Lab for review.
