Menace's first major early access update overhauls its least interesting faction and jettisons its reviled promotion tax system: 'We have done away with it'

While still very much at the 'early' stage of early access, Menace is by all accounts an excellent take on turn-based tactics. Wannabe space mercenary Jonathan Bolding was effusive in his praise of its approach to the genre when he deployed into its sci-fi universe in March. "I can't stress enough how much fun Menace's core strategy play is, even with a few early access quibbles," he wrote. "The basic rules simplify the kind of ultra-crunchy stuff you find in dense wargames into a faster-playing game without sacrificing any cool simulation."

Such player quibbles are also the focus of Menace's first major early access update. Released earlier this week, Menace's 'Redacted' update goes significantly further than the bugs and balance patches the game has received so far, reshaping several core features and mechanics in big ways.

This starts with the complete removal of one of Menace's most disliked features—the promotion tax. "This not so popular mechanic made sense from a game design perspective, but was very frustrating to engage with," developer Overhype Studios writes, explaining that this added cost made promoting units feel like a punishment, while unexpected promotions could throw off your planned loadout. "To compensate, we increased the squaddie supply costs across all ranges, but reduced the squad's base supply costs."

With the removal of one system comes the expansion (sort of) of another. Alongside being able to cut through fences, all units can now remove wrecked vehicles from the landscape, improving their ability to reshape the battlefield. You may not use this much at the moment, but Overhype says it will help "especially in confined areas like the new urban maps, which will become more prominent with a new operation we are working on." Intriguing!

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Overhype has reworked Menace's faction of creepy-looking cyborgs, the Constructs. "The constructs are the main faction of our game, but were severely lacking in uniqueness, variety and style," the developer explains. "We reorganised them a bit, overhauled their stats, and gave them new skills."

The changes here are numerous, but here are the highlights. Drones, the cannon fodder of the Construct faction, are now easier to kill but appear in larger groups. Soldiers can no longer use rocket attacks, meaning they can be countered with heavy vehicles. Meanwhile, "Guncrawler" units now have a rocket launcher, making them one of the faction's bigger threats. Finally, the update introduces a new high-tier unit for the faction, which Overhype describes as an "especially powerful support unit that will rattle things up a bit."

The redacted update is out now. 2026 is shaping up to be a decent year for tactics games. Alongside the early access launch of Menace, Star Wars: Zero Company is also due to release this year. We got our first proper look at the game back in March, and it's shaping up to be as much inspired by Mass Effect as it is X-COM.