Overhype's next game: "Menace"

[Heron]

I just happened to stumble over German news regarding the governmental financial support of German development studios. Funds were given out to games with a development start in 2021.

Overhype Studio's new project "Menace" is supported with 1.073.555 € and makes place 20 of the ranking.

https://www.gameswirtschaft.de/politik/games-foerderung-deutschland-bilanz-2021/

There's a brief German public project description too! I'll translate:

"Menace" is going to be a complex, turn based tactics game from Overhype Studios. There are 2 different layers to the game. The first layer is the strategic one, where players make overarching decisions. The second layer are turn based skirmishes taking place on a tactical map.

The game is based on Unity [engine] and features state of the art up-to-date 3D graphics [up to date is the more accurate translation, my bad]. Based on previous game development experiences, game content will be partially randomly generated, but feature additional innovations and mechanics.

In combination with extensive freedom of choice ingame, each player will thus have an individual game experience. The featured ingame factions sport fundamentally different characteristics and abilities. A special mention goes to the individual, different, complex AIs of the particular factions. These will define the factions with their own characteristics and individual sets of strategic and tactical behaviour, in order to grant them character, credibility and depth.

Menace will be financially supported from 1.12.21 - 21.12.24.

https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Artikel/DG/games-projekte/menace.html

Edit:
Just found another interesting tidbit in the comment section of a YouTube video: Overhype's next project (which must be Menace) will be released in multiple languages, not just English. Overhype stated as much in the comment section.

Which languages will be present isn't specified, but it's probably safe to assume that German will be among them. Overhype's comment was made in German in response to the German YouTuber and his following, the devs are German themselves and they've made it clear in the past that German would have been a top localisation priority for BB if there had been localisations.

https://youtu.be/LSkVNLuj8eI

Edit 9.12.2022:

Short English interview with creative director Paul Taaks here. He talks about Menace starting at 3:10.

His personal vision for Menace is that it should be "a little less frustrating" than BB as it always annoyed him how quickly characters could die when he was testing for bugs. 3D graphics are confirmed again and he mentions that in addition to heads, arms and legs can be chopped off in Menace.

When asked Taaks also says that "it's not that long anymore" until Overhype will start some kind of official communication regarding Menace.

https://www.gamereactor.eu/more-on-menace-by-overhype-there-will-be-3d-flying-legs-1223873/

Edit 07.02.2023:

Quite a lot of cool new information from Overhype's latest community talk. The talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jiTIob06zQ
The gist of it:

Overhype aim at doing a big proper game announcement in early summer, a little bit ahead of Gamescom or at Gamescom. But they can’t promise 100 %. Game is fully playable and testing will start internally within 2 weeks. Menace is very highly likely planned as an Early Access for playtesting and balancing, probably with a shorter EA period than BB.

The setting can’t be revealed yet, but when asked if the setting has anything to do with the artwork reveal in a 2017 blog post the answer was “Perhaps. Ehmm, might be… (chuckling)”. Later Taaks said that one main inspiration for BB was Jacked Alliance and it sounds like Jacked Alliance is also a main inspiration for Menace. Timestamp 33:20. The blog post for reference:
https://battlebrothersgame.com/conclusion-update-1-1-released/

2D turned out to be too limiting in terms of animations, that’s why devs decided to go for 3D unity. They’ll try to at least partially keep the handdrawn look that appealed to so many players in BB.

Menace is highly procedural but a little less so than BB. BB doesn’t have a set goal and the only player motivation in BB is money which is a rather weak motivation. In Menace the motivation will be more meaningful. But at the core Menace will be a story generator with emergent gameplay just like BB with tools for the player to develop their own personal playstyle.

Battles will have a bigger scope than Battle Brothers. Mounts / vehicles haven’t been confirmed but not outright denied either. AI is a high priority because strategy games with bad AI are no fun. Menace will be even more complex to play for the AI than BB and the AI will have to be good at positioning and anticipating.

Menace will have women.
Menace will have a perk system similar to BB.
Menace will have a mechanic that prevents downwards spiraling from heavy late game losses.
Menace will have a proper tutorial, game mechanic introductions over time and so on.

Menace will have some kind of light base building. Later Taaks expresses his belief that base building generally should offer choices so that bases end up differently from one another. Linear upgrade trees or clearly optimal upgrade paths aren’t ideal.

Due to Unity engine console ports and controller support will be much easier to implement than in BB. It will also be easier to mod and new employees can already be proficient with it. The team has grown from 3 to 7 full-time employees and animations are being outsourced.

There are no plans for native linux support. Different localizations are a priority to make Menace accessible to more players.

Text to speech voice generation is something the devs look into for Menace for prototyping, where it’s very helpful. Voice actors are of much higher quality for a final product though.

3.03.23: Snippets from a German podcast interview with Jan Taaks

https://www.spielvertiefung.de/post/auf-einen-whisky-jan-taaks

- Menace was first prototyped in 2018
- Overhype aim for an early access period of about one year
- Menace draws very heavy inspiration from Jagged Alliance. Taaks jokingly exclaims:
"The new Jagged Alliance! (Laughs) No no, they're still quite different." (Timestamp 46:08)

[Firerage]

3D, Unity, oh no...

[Heron]

Legs! The horror! xD

[Firerage]

thats even worse

[Gilius Thunderhead]

:O

[Heron]

Still, I'm pretty excited right now! First real news since forever! :)

[Gilius Thunderhead]

They might still be doing that near future mercenary thing they showed art for ages ago (obviously with new art though) - Jagged Alliance vibes?

I know I'm hella speculating and clutching at straws here

[Heron]

Originally posted by Gilius Thunderhead:

They might still be doing that near future mercenary thing they showed art for ages ago (obviously with new art though) - Jagged Alliance vibes?

I know I'm hella speculating and clutching at straws here

Can't really draw any conclusions from the exposé in regards to the setting. It could be anything. Which means it could also be that, yes.

The art they showed back then had legs, so could have been planned for 3D Unity all along. They also mentioned in the blog that the new project won't be BB2 but will resemble BB, which seems to fit here.

http://battlebrothersgame.com/conclusion-update-1-1-released/

[suejak]

Very nice sleuthing!

A little spooked about the AI line, as in my experience AI ambitions not only never work out, they gobble up a lot of dev resources and still don't work out.

Buuut it's entirely possible we're finally reaching the AI revolution for gaming.

[juanval]

If this new game has the level of quality BB has, it wil be very welcome.

[Heron]

Originally posted by suejak:

Very nice sleuthing!

A little spooked about the AI line, as in my experience AI ambitions not only never work out, they gobble up a lot of dev resources and still don't work out.

Buuut it's entirely possible we're finally reaching the AI revolution for gaming.

I suppose it's just an evolution of what we already had in BB, where different factions have their own tactical AI too (Goblins, Orcs,...). Now they're adding distinct strategic AIs for each faction on top of that. I'm optimistic that it will be fine.

Imo the critical question is if they're referring to the equivalent of BB's enemy types or BB's noble houses when they use the term "faction". A much more unique, distinct equivalent of BB's noble houses (much more distinct major, quest giving factions, kind of like nobles vs city states with dynamic peace / war system) would be a big evolutionary step in the right direction imo. It would make sense for the major factions to have their own strategic AI's if this were the case.

[Hykal]

Overhype has done mostly well in my book (except for the lack of QoL updates), so I would be looking forward to it regardless if it's modern or fantasy.

[L V X]

So this new game can be released anytime in the next two years or only after 2024?

[Heron]

Originally posted by Vardano:

So this new game can be released anytime in the next two years or only after 2024?

There's nothing concrete about the planned release date.

Full development probably started around 2021 and financial help from the German government will last until the end of 2024. I would guess end of 2024 or later, but it could be earlier in theory. We don't know.

[Heron]

Just found another interesting tidbit in the comment section of a YouTube video: Overhype's next project (which must be Menace) will be released in multiple languages, not just English. Overhype stated as much in the comment section.

Which languages will be present isn't specified, but it's probably safe to assume that German will be among them. Overhype's comment was made in German in response to the German YouTuber and his following, the devs are German themselves and they've made it clear in the past that German would have been a top localisation priority for BB if there had been localisations.

https://youtu.be/LSkVNLuj8eI

[thegorlans]

great catch bro!!! i linked your post on reddit .... and got jubilant responses!!