Ever wonder what the world of Zootopia would be like if it was a 1950s noir world? Me neither, but it turns out it looks awesome, folks. Wild Tactics is a story-driven strategy game about a team of anti-organized-crime animals fighting to return peace to their city's utopian project: Let all animals live in peace. It sounds bizarre and it kind of is, but the gameplay reveal at the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted has a lot of the unique energy you want to see from this kind of game.
Focusing on the core of XCOM-like isometric tactics prioritizing cover and positioning, Wild Tactics sends your team of unique animal weirdos against 15 story-driven missions to take down a criminal element that has grown all too powerful.
The trailer shows off in-game footage of the cover-based combat, as characters hop between map areas while deploying special powers to outwit enemies. A bruiser ram stops mid-run to bash some heads with a baseball bat. A fennec foxvanishes in a puff of smoke to sneak past foes and flank them. Meanwhile, a wolf cop—maybe soldier—lets loose a howl that lets her allies know the plan.
Those story-driven missions are backed up by the social system that underlies your Wild Squad's crew: "All the characters have different relationships with each other, giving them various buffs and debuffs. Hate, love, or friendship, each influences the battles differently. These relationships can be upgraded or downgraded, based on the character’s performance in combat and on the time they spend together," say the developers.
Wild Tactics is made by The Wild Gentlemen, a studio that previously made the Chicken Police series of weirdo absurdist visual novels, the most recent of which released just last month. They hope to get Wild Tactics out the door and into your hands in the first quarter of 2025.
You can find Wild Tactics on Steam.
