Hello Marines,

To accompany you in your USC: Counterforce progress, every week we're sharing a new guide for you to become a true pro! The third week we are focusing on the UI.

The purpose of this entry is to guide players on the possible adjustments available for the data displayed in the UI during combat. Learn more information on USC: Counterforce's UI in our "UI" section of the wiki:

Here is an example of all the different UI you can find in missions:
As always, if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the Steam discussions. We're always attentive and will do everything we can to help!

The USC: Counterforce team

Hello Marines,

USC: Counterforce is inspired by a ton of retro references. Whether it's from 90's turn-based games or movies, you can easily understand that we have huge 80s and 90s inspirations.

This week is the perfect moment to deep dive into our inspirations as we are participating in Boomstock 2024, A celebration of all Boomer Shooters and kick-ass action games in general, all connected by their love for the good old days of gaming, shining through in the games’ artstyle, gameplay, or both!

For the following part, I - Aliza, Lead Programmer - will take the mic. So let's dive into our references!


I will definitely start with James Cameron's Aliens (1986), the sequel to Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien (1979).

Movie Poster of "Aliens" (1986) by James Cameron, www.plansamericains.com

Aliens expands into the lore of what the Xenomorphs are as a species, and pits a squad of hardened marines against them, far away from any reinforcements or help. But, contrary to the original movie, it is shown the aliens, though lethal, and very terrifying in many ways, especially with their reproduction cycle, are indeed vulnerable, and these brave soldiers at least have some fighting chance. Humans also have what the Xenomorphs don't: technology, including nuclear warheads, and mechanized forklifts :) and airlocks, which ultimately lead to the demise of the hive and the alien queen.

Left: Screenshot in-game of the Reaper in USC: Counterforce
Right: Image of the movie Aliens (1986) by James Caron, from the Dread Central website


USC tries to summon the atmosphere--marines with state-of-the-art technology arrive to clean up the planet after a mysterious incident with some "aliens", that turns out to be not really more than animals--or maybe there's more about them? The task force is separated from any help and must fight for survival after things take a turn for the worst. Also, the in-game "head camera" is directly inspired by the body cameras in Aliens. In the Campaign, you'll also be able to launch tactical nukes on the planet's surface to eliminate nests, or hordes of aliens that are converging on your planetside positions. "That's the only way to be sure!"

Screenshot of USC: Counterforce


For the good old games that greatly influenced USC: Counterforce. We always wanted to strike a good balance between a kind of “realism” and old-school, boardgame-like combat mechanics—and though this is generally true about almost all games in the genre, we aim to emphasize the game’s “tabletop feel” in many ways.

First of these is the completely top-down presentation (at least as far as the tactical map screen goes, since you can also follow your marines through their head cameras)—and with this comes an almost completely flat map, without elevations and multi-story buildings. After Ultimate Space Commando we were experimenting with bringing elevations to its sequel, but ultimately, we found that it didn’t work well with the “flagship” USC mechanics, and it didn’t do good for the dynamic of the game. We didn’t want to change that special feeling that comes with this presentation, a feeling that made games like Julian Gollop’s Laser Squad (1988-1992), Space Hulk (board game: 1989, PC: 1993), or Space Crusade (board game: 1990, Amiga/PC: 1992) so great.

We played these games as children back in the early 90s, and they made a huge footprint in our lives. Equipping your squad with weapons, ammo, and armor to take on a mad scientist, defending your base, or fighting aliens in a jungle in Laser Squad was an experience second to none. You had Time Units to spend in each turn, carefully planning your movement and shots, consulting the scanner (minimap) to devise your tactics—and then being gunned down by a well-placed opportunity shot from the AI. You could destroy walls and obstacles, and it was important to be aware of your surroundings as you moved with your squad. Many choices with a comprehensible system behind them, forcing you to think, to make the best of each of your turns. If there was only one game to name as an influence for USC and USC: CF, it would be Laser Squad. We often tend to call squad- and turn-based games against aliens “UFO or X-Com-clones”, but really, those games only came after.

Laser Squad "Screenshot 11" - Killed the enemy droid, mobygames.com

Space Hulk and Space Crusade, both parts of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, are a little bit different kinds of beasts, but only on the surface. You have a squad of hardened Space Marines; you have a grid-based map of tight corridors, rooms, and doors you can open. The rules are simpler, and your choices are not so abundant, but you have to act almost perfectly in every situation to survive. Positioning of your units is key, as Line of Sight mechanics and other rules are very strict—these are board games, after all! And the atmosphere, the feeling of constant and imminent threat at every corner, while your Marines themselves are nothing short of a human war machine—really unique! When we look at the systems behind these games, we can see they differ a LOT from that of Laser Squad, but what they have in common makes them very fun, very engaging, and indeed very difficult games. Making something this engaging in 2022 is no small task—graphics and UX expectations may have evolved, but those in themselves don’t make a great tactical game! We can still learn a lot from games we played decades ago.

Images of Space Hulk and Space Crusade, the video games and board games from the 1990s


USC: Counterforce and its prequel, Ultimate Space Commando, also take a lot of inspiration from some lesser-known games, a few „hidden gems” from the late 1990s, the “age of 3D revolution”. While many developers were preoccupied with the evolving graphical capabilities of computers, and the addition of the third dimension, there were still titles that mainly focused on classic, almost tabletop-like gameplay, and still managed to bring something new and cool to the table.

One of these games is Incubation: Time is Running Out (1997) by Blue Byte. It was a turn- and tile-based, squad-oriented tactical game with a heavy focus on management of very limited actions per turn. It was heavily story-based, with a long campaign mode, and squad members you grew attached to and could equip with different gear, gadgets, and weapons, tailoring them to the tactics you wanted to use. During the whole game, you felt like your options were limited, but never your tactics: this game really shined in shoehorning you into situations you could somehow still get out of alive if you found the proper tactics.

There were some very unique mechanics that are not seen in many games: a well-implemented weapon overheat system (instead of ammo); a non-class- or skill-locked overwatch mode that—since most enemies died from 1 or 2 shots—was very often important in stopping an alien before it reached you; a simple, but tactically relevant use of elevations; and the ability to control the battlefield with some items and weapons—for example, if you used the flamethrower, it created an area of impassable terrain for a few turns. Incubation also had a PvP game mode in which up to 4 players could fight against each other in asymmetric objective-based battles. USC is directly inspired by the way Incubation handles overwatch (or “defense mode”) and the importance of facing in the right direction with your units.

Another game to mention is Gorky 17 (also known as Odium, 1999) by Metropolis Software. It was also a very heavily story-driven game in which a small group of NATO operatives had to fight to survive and to reveal the mystery behind the sudden appearance of hybrid creatures in a former Soviet military base in Poland.

There was an “exploration mode” where you moved around with your characters in real-time, discovering items, talking to people, and finding your way, but whenever a combat situation ensued, the game would not only switch to turn-based but you and your enemies were put on a grid-based, not-too-big battlefield, where the actual fighting took place. All weapons and items had their specific, very board game-like mechanics, and that, combined with the often very confined spaces led to some rather interesting battle scenarios. Just like Space Crusade, Space Hulk, or Incubation, the emphasis on smaller spaces and tighter rules was not a constraint, but rather a playground for devising smart tactics.

In fact, I was so hooked on this approach to turn-based mechanics that I perfected dealing with the enemies using only the more basic weapons while stockpiling explosives and all kinds of nasty stuff for those really hard battles and ended up completing the game with a whole nuclear arsenal still in my inventory... All said and done, I think Gorky 17 was not flawless, but still an excellent game, and showed yet another way, another approach to how boardgame-like rules can be applied in a computer game, while making it feel like NOT a board game.

Let's chat about all these great piece of art in our Discord: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

The USC Counterforce team