Steam Next Fest is here and you’re likely about to be up to your eyeballs in video game demos. There are plenty of promising indies you can try for free during the event, and we’ll coming at you with some recommendations as we uncover the gems. If you need a place to start, though, look no further than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown.
The Turtles’ latest adventure is unlike any they’ve embarked on before. It’s not some form of beat-em-up, but a turn-based strategy game by I Am Your Beast developer Strange Scaffold. The tactics genre may sound like an odd fit for our reptilian friends on paper, but it works surprisingly well. That’s thanks to a new spin on the genre that gives players much more to do on a single turn. It’s a fast-paced tactics game that feels spiritually linked to the Turtles’ arcade days in ways you may not see coming.
In the hour-long demo that’s now on Steam, players move through a tutorial and then four stages. Each one puts players in control of a different brother, showcasing their unique move set. It all seems par for the course early on as I move my turtle around a grid and attack ninjas, but I quickly begin to pick up what makes it different. For one, my surroundings aren’t static. As I defeat enemies over my turns, one piece of the map will disappear and a new piece will open up. I need to keep myself out of a red zone when that changeover happens or else I’ll get taken down with the map.
In that way, Tactical Takedown almost feels like a classic beat-em-up. I’m fighting a screen full of enemies and moving forward to the next battleground. That connection becomes especially apart to me when I find myself in a stage that has me moving down a street that’s not so different from a set piece you’d find in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Of course, I can even pick up stray pizza boxes to heal myself just as I would in a beat-em-up. It’s a clever genre twist that keeps a totally new kind of Turtles game rooted in history.
That’s further reinforced by its busy tactics system. In most strategy games like this, I usually only get a few action points to work with per turn. I can move and attack, perhaps even use an item, but then my enemy gets a turn. Tactical Takedown shatters that idea by giving me a whopping six actions every turn. I can spend those in any way I’d like, whether I use them to hop around, attack enemies, or give myself some perks. I can get a heck of a lot done by the time my turn ends, retaining the fast-paced action of classic Turtles games even in a turn-based project.
Each hero takes advantage of that flexibility with their moves. Donatello’s play style is all about lining enemies up and hitting them two at a time with his staff. On his turns, I use my actions to hop around to any spot where two enemies are standing right next to each other, taking them both out in one go, and hopping somewhere else. Raphael is more built around getting right in the heat of action, using slash to grant him stacks of evasion. Michelangelo is more about mobility, as he can leap over far off enemies and smack them with his Nunchaku as he passes by. Each hero pays a little differently, but can take out several enemies in one turn if played right.
Once I got the hang of it and could string together actions with confidence, it nearly felt like I was playing a real-time action game. I especially got into the groove in one rooftop stage where I kept hopping right in front of enemies standing right on the edge of the roof, booting them off, and hopping to another. On a good turn, I could completely wipe out four enemies within seconds of quick thinking. That’s what I want from a Ninja Turtles game, and that’s what this one delivers.
Tactical Takedown almost feels like a return to a long-lost age of licensed games, in some ways. It’s the kind of experimental take on an IP that you used to get from the Super Nintendo to Game Boy Advance era, back before companies were much more guarded their their valuable franchises. It feels like rights holders are loosening up that iron grip in recent years, with games like Tron: Catalyst and Disney Illusion Island giving us surprise gems from some of today’s most talented indie developers. While Strange Scaffold isn’t the most obvious choice to handle the Turtles on paper (this is the team whose last projects include a game about a creep who gets off on watching people click a button and and a horror game about a serial killing stalker who performs blood rituals on his victims), the studio’s creative energy works wonders for a franchise that’s been adapted to death here. Tactical Takedown feels destined to become a cult classic among Turtles fans who want something new rather than another retro classic that panders to arcade nostalgia.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown‘s Steam Next Fest demo is available now through March 3. The full game is set to launch later this year on PC.
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