Battle Brothers enters early access

Word reaches me that the fantasy strategy / tactical RPG Battle Brothers (previously covered here) has been released to early access purchasers. In development by German indies Overhype Studios, Battle Brothers involves creating and equipping small armies of characters on an overworld map, maneuvering them to various locations via said map, and then “zooming in” to engage in turn-based tactical battles. It’s fantasy X-COM, basically.

There isn’t actually a proper story yet, though that’s on the list of planned features. For now, you’re just a mercenary company taking on whatever jobs you like without any overarching goal. To wit:

The game consists of a strategic worldmap and a tactical combat layer. On the worldmap you can freely travel in order to take contracts that earn you good coin, find places worth looting, enemies worth pursuing or towns to resupply and hire men at. This is also where you manage, level up and equip your Battle Brothers. Once you engage a hostile party the game will switch to a tactical map where the actual fighting takes place as detailed turn based combat.

The world map is procedurally generated, death is permanent, equipment is extensive, and character development is open-ended rather than class-based. It sounds great, basically. It also helps that the graphical style is beautiful and painterly (though at the cost of your characters having legs or torsos or animations):

The devs caution that BB is far from finished; they expect development to continue for another year or so. You can snag the current alpha of the game direct from the developers for $19.99, or on Steam Early Access for that same amount. Windows only.