Chris InglisWarhounds is a turn-based tactics game in development by Everplay DMCC and published by Brightika, Inc. Slated for a Spring 2026 release, the game strips away the reliance on dice rolls of hit chance during turn-based combat to deliver something far colder, calculated, and rewarding. Set in an alternative near-future Africa, you lead an elite mercenary unit through a regional conflict where the stakes feel heavy and the math is finally on your side.
The story leans heavily into an old-school action movie vibe. You play as the commander of a squad operating in the year 2035. Warhounds feels grounded in the grit of a localised civil war where your contracts directly dictate the political landscape. The story is structured around an episodic campaign with some cheesy one-liners and classic bad guy behaviour.
In addition, choices you make during base management, such as which soldiers to hire and how to manage your budget, have consequences on the missions available to you. It’s a refreshing take that prioritises the soldier of fortune atmosphere, making your squad feel like a group of specialised operators rather than disposable grunt units.
The most captivating thing about the gameplay is the total absence of fake RNG. If you have the line of sight and the positioning with a 60% chance to hit, you will hit and do some damage rather than that 40% dominating and you completely missing your shot. Combat outcomes are driven by a readable set of variables where positioning critical.
Partial cover can easily be attacked and blown up to expose you or your enemy. Elevation provides a clear, logical advantage without hidden modifiers. It creates a high-lethality environment where every move feels like a chess placement. When a squad member goes down, it’s because you put them in harms way yourself, not due to lack of good dice rolls.
The cone-based overwatch is enhanced where the angle of coverage shows which squares your soldier is covering. This allowing you to overlap with another soldier’s arc for maximum coverage. Pairing this with a deep ballistics system means every bullet is simulated independently, allowing for grazing hits that still do partial damage based on physics rather than a random number generator.
Additionally, the destructible cover system and the inclusion of modern tools like optical camo and deployable drones add a layer of strategy that feels integrated into each map’s verticality. Scrolling the middle mouse button moves you through the map layers so you can really plan your angles and cover.
One final note is on the use of AI for character portraits, and the developers have stated: “AI-generated content is used only for a limited number of generic fighter portraits. These images are temporary placeholders for the playtest and demo versions and will be fully replaced once over 100 hand-made portraits are completed.” So long as they stick to their word then this is perfectly fine for the playtest and demos.
So far, the Warhounds demo contains enough cheesy macho one-liners to make me chuckle while giving me almost full control over the battlefield and my expected damage outputs. I can make proper informed judgements on how close I need to be for the soldier’s weapons to be effective when shooting and utilising cover. While the game draws heavy inspiration from XCOM 2 and Jagged Alliance, it manages to carve out its own identity by replacing probability management with honest physics. If you’re tired of losing your best soldiers to a literal roll of the dice, this is well worth a look.
These demo impressions utilised a key provided by Brightika. The Warhounds demo is available as part of the current Steam Next Fest and the full game is aiming for a 2026 release.
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