Hello Marines,

A new sci-fi game joins the Firesquid lineup: Xenopurge!

With a very similar theme to USC, but a very different gameplay:

• Fight the alien threat
  
• Command and guide your troops
  
• Manage your soldiers and gears

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2983410/Xenopurge/

Xenopurge is a real-time tactics game where you take the role of a commander, set up in a base of command, issuing orders remotely to your elite squad on the field. From several computer screens, you see the blueprints of the facilities your units traverse, directing them to search, recover, and destroy. Other than by your direct command, they will adapt to their surroundings, fending off the enemy in their sights.

The ever-present Xeno alien threat permeates every mission. You and your team are a part of the organisation M.A.C.E (Mercer’s Advanced Combat Enterprises), tasked with purging the system of their presence in Xenowarfare. Recruit new members with a variety of skill specialties, upgrade their equipment, and improve your command tactics to achieve this goal, without losing too many of your people along the way.

In this retro-futuristic military world, the grit of warfare hangs heavy on your shoulders. Alien horrors await around every door and corner for your squad. Do not hesitate to make your decisions, as failure means the alien infestation will consume everything.

[discord.gg]

Hello Marines!
For the Steam Spring Sale, USC: Counterforce is 60% off for the first time!

Enjoy this great discount and fight the alien threat in a place where no one can hear you scream!

Join our Discord to chat with us about USC Counterforce: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

Hello Marines!

We're part of the Couch Coop Fest! Play great games with friends and family, including USC: Counterforce!


Gear up and take the fight to the enemy, but you don't have to do it alone. Steam Remote Play Together allows you to invite a fellow marine to join your fight. You can play with up to two (you and your friend). One player owns and runs the game using the Remote Play Together feature to invite a friend.

Here's a step-by-step guide to get you started:
Start by launching the game from your Steam library. Once you're in the game, open your Friend List on Steam. From there, send them an invitation to join your game: simply right-click on their name and select the "Invite to Remote Play Together" option. Your friend will receive the invitation and can accept it to join you. You will be sharing and streaming the game for your friend.

To better play USC: Counterforce using Remote Play Together, we recommend that you share your squad files with your friend. If you host the game, add their squad file in your squad folder here: %userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow\Angry Cat Studios\USC Counterforce\squads. You can choose the squads you wish to play with. Only the host will gain XP and get the unlocked items. Once the run ends and your team has won, give your friend's squad file back, so they can have the new statistics and materials stored in that squad file.

USC: Counterforce's “coop mode”, powered by Remote Play Together, offers some features to enhance your shared game experience:

• Individual or shared controls: You and your friend can control the game using your own keyboards and mice. This means you can coordinate your tactics and strategies effectively. You can also share control of the keyboard and mouse. It's all about teamwork, and this feature allows you to truly work together.
  
• Stream video, audio, and voice: Remote Play Together enables you to stream video, audio, and voice between players. This means you can communicate and strategize in real-time, just like you would if you were playing side-by-side.
  
• Voice chat and game volume: All your voice chat and game volume options are conveniently available in one place, so you can fine-tune your settings to match your preferred style of play.

Time to enlist your fellow friends, share the action, and prove that you deserve to be part of the Ultimate Space Commando. Get ready to lock and load, marines!

USC: Counterforce is developed by a team of two developers. While including online coop outside of Remote Play Together would be interesting, it's essential to understand the limitations that led to this decision. Developing a coop mode adds a significant workload to setting up the architecture needed and would potentially delay the full release. Making a stable and enjoyable online coop mode is complex for many reasons. It involves synchronizing game states between multiple players, dealing with latency issues, and ensuring balanced gameplay. This complexity can lead to unforeseen technical challenges and require extensive testing and debugging which significantly increases the scope of QA and testing. Implementing an online coop feature requires a dedicated effort to create and maintain servers and grouping systems. The team needs to thoroughly test the game's server infrastructure and online interactions to ensure a smooth and bug-free experience for all. This process was time-consuming and resource-intensive, preventing us from working on the core features, polish, balance, and bug fixes.

Our goal is to make the best game possible. Choosing to rely on Remote Play Together is a practical choice. It allowed the team to concentrate their efforts on other aspects of the game and deliver a more polished and enjoyable experience for all, but still allows you to play with friends!

The USC: Counterforce team

Hello Marines,

To celebrate the Holidays we're coming with two good news. The game is 50% off on Steam, from December 19th 7PM UTC+1, so don't forget to get your copy.

And we're bringing back the Christmas update!

The event will last for a couple of weeks so don't forget to get your hands on the game this December.

During the event, you can collect X-mas presents in two game modes: Single Mission and Operations, note that the event won't affect the Defend the Base! and Campaign game modes. These presents are items scattered on the ground in three variations, with a total of 15 per mission. Carry them with you when finishing the mission (or extracting) to add them to your total collected amount!

Rewards:
- 100+ presents: "Rambo Ducky" squad logo
- 125+ presents: "Golden Ducky" yellow squad livery
- 150+ presents: A Commanducky-inspired, modified Assault Rifle, the "Quacker" (simultaneously better and worse than the default AR — see if it suits your needs ;) Quack!)

And because everything is better with a Christmas spirit:
- The Wunderwurms will wear Santa hats
- X-mas trees and presents will appear on maps (only in Single Mission and Operations game modes)

FYI the duck reward won't be in the campaign but only in custom missions!

Have fun during the event and let us know what you think. Happy Holidays!

To celebrate this very cool event, we're coming back on the turn-based mechanics of the game.


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.

Join our Discord to chat with us of USC Counterforce: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

The USC Counterforce team

Hey marines,

We're honored to participate in the Turn-Based RPG Fest on Steam! In USC: Counterforce, we’ve designed the turn-based mechanics to provide deep tactical options, delivering a challenging gameplay experience. As the player, you’ll control a squad of elite space marines, each with a certain amount of Action Points that can be used in each turn. Whether it’s moving, attacking, deploying abilities, or interacting with the environment, every action matters. Effective positioning and smart use of cover are essential, as poorly placed units can quickly be eliminated.


One of the major features of combat is the ability to interact with the environment. Destructible objects and terrain give you the chance to turn the battlefield to your advantage—whether you’re blowing through walls or taking cover behind structures, the terrain can shape the flow of battle. Additionally, unit customization is a core part of our design. You can equip your marines with a variety of weapons and skills, creating devastating combos, such as freezing and shattering enemies or using acid and fire.

In Campaign mode, you’ll manage actions over planetary time phases, each representing three Earth hours. Balancing tasks like scanning, squad deployment, and engaging alien forces is crucial, as enemies evolve dynamically, pushing you to adjust your tactics quickly. During each Mission Time Phase, the Horde moves, seeking out any human presence. You'll receive resources based on the actions taken in the previous turn. The time of day and weather also change on the planetary body.


The upgrade system plays a critical role in developing your squad’s capabilities. By collecting resources and materials, you can upgrade weapons, gear, and equipment, ensuring your marines are always prepared for tougher battles. Players can fine-tune their squads with upgrades tailored to their playstyle, creating a flexible progression system that rewards both aggressive and cautious strategies.

Resource management is another vital component of our gameplay. Looting, when available, and ensuring your squad is stocked with enough ammunition is essential for survival. You can’t always rely on sheer firepower alone; planning when and where to gather resources will be critical to long-term success in the field.

Our AI and randomized encounters make sure each mission feels fresh, challenging, and unpredictable. Enemies react to your actions, and the Fog of War mechanic means that rushing headfirst into unknown territory can have devastating consequences, making cautious scouting a must.

In summary, USC: Counterforce offers a rich blend of tactical combat, environmental strategy, and resource management. Every decision you make has weight, and success will require both careful planning and adaptability. We’ve built this system to reward players who think ahead and adjust on the fly.

Enjoy the event and let's chat about your strategies and tactics in our Discord: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

The USC Counterforce team

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

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! This time, let's focus on Equipment & Crafting materials.

Here, you can find extra information about Equipment and Crafting materials, along with tips and hints that might help you when fighting the aliens. Looking to learn more about crafting and what you can collect? Check out our "Equipment & Crafting materials" section:

Here is the table of contents and all you can find in this section of the wiki:
Let's look at an example of the info you can find for the painkillers:
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

USC:CF v1.01.0a, build 240909

BALANCE CHANGES

• Campaign: revised victory conditions for different ending tiers (it is bit easier now to get the chance for a more favorable ending)

CHANGES

• Changed logo intro animation to a shorter version
  
• Added a button for our official Wiki page to the main menu

FIXES

• Fixed a bug where nest glands, shadow flame trails and Envoys' shadow AoE attacks would completely remove force field emitters
  
• Fixed a very rare bug where any new Single Mission started would have the "poison per turn" special condition
  
• Minor UI fixes