Burned Horizons Screenshot
Image: BURNED HORIZONS STUDIO

A lot of studios have tried to thread the needle of combining turn-based tactics with gritty military realism. Few have had much success, but this hasn't stopped anyone from trying. BURNED HORIZONS is the latest attempt - a narrow Kickstarter success launching into early access today. Set back in 2002 against a backdrop of a fictional Russian invasion of Ukraine that threatens to spill out across the entirety of Europe, you are head of a mercenary company unit with the Ukrainian military, taking tough jobs for cash.

Burned Horizons is trying to be as realistic a simulation of near-modern warfare as possible, with missions potentially taking your squad across vast distances. Combat can happen at anything from room-to-room close quarters to sniper range. There's detailed damage modelling for your troops, potential for psychological scars as well as physical ones, and potential for missions to spiral out of control.

The developers want it to simulate military operations, not simple tactics game scenarios. Just because you shot all the enemies within a couple hundred yards of your starting point doesn't mean anything is over, and your squad can end up rolling from one encounter to the next before they have a chance of being picked up and taken home for tea and sandwiches.

While I've not played this one myself yet, the initial user reviews post a grim picture. A few positive outliers, but more seem upset at the lack of content and polish in this initial version. Despite that, Burned Horizons Studio has big plans for this one. The current early access version just contains a slice of Ukraine to fight across, but they plan on having the campaign span twelve environments that cross into neighboring countries.

It all sounds hugely ambitious, and while I wish them all the luck in the world (and genuinely hope for their success - as a Jagged Alliance fan, I'd love to see more realistic tactics games), this one has an uphill battle ahead of it. The game's Kickstarter barely squeaked past their $30k funding target, and the remainder of production will have to be funded with whatever the game makes in early access.

Burned Horizons is out now on Steam for £33.49/$45, with a long way to go until it leaves early access, with at least another full year of development planned from here, with plans to raise the game's base price to $60 when it's all done. Although having seen many projects of this kind of wild ambition and scope before, I'd suggest treating the game as a product-as-is, liable to end production if the funding dries up. This isn't a criticism, just the tough nature of game development, especially for underfunded indie devs.