MicroProse recently announced they’ll be publishing a new tactical RPG called Urban Strife, developed by Romanian indie White Pond Games, blending the old school style of Jagged Alliance 2 with the grim atmosphere of The Walking Dead.
Set in the Southern town of Urban in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, you awake in a ruined survivor camp with no memory of how you got there. Your benefactors need your help rebuilding and making sure the inhabitants stay safe from the zombies as well as other less virtuous souls among the living. Players will need to build up their skills, eliminate or negotiate with hostile factions, and carve out a sanctuary among the ruins for people to thrive.
Much like Jagged Alliance 2, Urban Strife plans to use a classic Action Point system per turn (rather than an XCOM-style “action bar”) with consecutive turns and interrupts based on skill and proficiency. Players can target specific body parts when shooting, and use the game’s day/night cycle to help with stealthy maneuvers and silent takedowns. In an effort to avoid a bunch of wasted time waiting for every individual zombie to move on their own, the zombies will move as a horde, with each individual moving on the same tick simultaneously but acting individually depending on AI. Urban Strife plans to go beyond its spiritual predecessors in several ways, such as detailed base building mechanics and survival systems, as well as a full physics-based ballistics system and a dynamic fire mechanic that accounts for material consumption and spread rather than just laying down spots where characters take damage.
Finally, Urban Strife will be releasing an SDK add-on free to allow for mod support, a task made easier with the team’s use of the Unreal Engine. Urban Strife is expected to release sometime in Fall 2021 exclusively on Steam.
