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)

[ecb2]

Thanks for sharing the news. Appreciated!

[redwitch]

well, characters have legs, but at least we can chop them off, that's something for us traditionalists

[Willow Ufgood]

Publicado originalmente por redwitch:

well, characters have legs, but at least we can chop them off, that's something for us traditionalists

someone better make a no legs mod

[381]

they talked about next game years ago glad things getting moving can't wait and see. Battle brothers was my the best early access game ever

[serotoninpack]

Prob. they're stuck at the legs part. My fear is it is going to have less depth than BB because of the 3D assets. I hope I'm wrong.

[Heron]

Publicado originalmente por serotoninpack:

Prob. they're stuck at the legs part. My fear is it is going to have less depth than BB because of the 3D assets. I hope I'm wrong.

They've grown their studio size to 7 to handle the additional workload. Given that they started BB with ultra limited resources, there's good reason to hope that they know what they can handle.

[Nerdgasm]

Double Amputation
Cannot equip weapons
Grants 'Bite you to death' and 'Headbutt' skills
+100 resolve

Jokes aside, I hope they add multiplayer.

[Willow Ufgood]

Publicado originalmente por Nerdgasm:

Double Amputation
Cannot equip weapons
Grants 'Bite you to death' and 'Headbutt' skills
+100 resolve

Jokes aside, I hope they add multiplayer.

lol monty python

[serotoninpack]

Publicado originalmente por Heron:

Publicado originalmente por serotoninpack:

Prob. they're stuck at the legs part. My fear is it is going to have less depth than BB because of the 3D assets. I hope I'm wrong.

They've grown their studio size to 7 to handle the additional workload. Given that they started BB with ultra limited resources, there's good reason to hope that they know what they can handle.

I appreciate this game not only for the tactical and customization freedom but also because its very own, distinct graphics style and the richness of detail present in it.

Seen a lot of 3D games sacrificing depth and attention to detail simply because of the amount of work that must go into creating 3D assets consumes a huge amount of time. Seen a lot of games descending into mediocrity and blandness under the facade of last gen graphics sprinkled with lens flares.

When it comes to this genre I believe the isometric perspective offers a lot more creative freedom to game developers than a 3D engine.

Hmm... also leaked gameplay of limb chopping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs

[REhorror]

Seeing that you can chop up enemies' limbs, I really hope it's safe to assume the setting is gonna be medieval.
I just want a screenshot or something to confirm the graphical style.

[Willow Ufgood]

Publicado originalmente por serotoninpack:

Publicado originalmente por Heron:

Hmm... also leaked gameplay of limb chopping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs

so realistic omg can't wait

[Sir Clavius]

I hope this time devs not going to remove the bridges from campaign map.

What about horses?

[Heron]

Publicado originalmente por Ulrich:

I hope this time devs not going to remove the bridges from campaign map.

What about horses?

No horses do. Seriously though, we don't even know if it's a medieval(ish) setting yet.

[Heron]

Updated now with the latest info from the 03/02/2023 community talk.

[Hykal]

Sounds fantastic. I hope we get mercs of some kind, whether they be the scifi or the tacticool, Ill take em.