Grit & Valor: 1949

This dieselpunk roguelike in an alternate World War 2 has plenty of chaotic mech action and tactics.

To avoid constantly repeating myself, let’s point at my two previews to cover the basics, then we can just jump right in with “What is the full, released game like?” It’s still retrofuture 1949, the Nazis still won, but you and your resistance movement are still fighting them with giant stompy mechs instead of rational, logical debate. The release version opens up campaigns in Scandinavia, Western Europe, and New Germany (and the British Isles campaign got some polish) as well as the ...

Grit & Valor - 1949 is not a game that relies on radical innovation, but it doesn't have to. It proves that sometimes it's enough to combine familiar mechanics with a clear concept and a lot of playful subtlety to create something good and enjoyable. Mech unlocks and limited enemy variety can be straining, but this is still a worthwhile experience.

Grit & Valor 1949 is set, fairly obviously in 1949, but it’s not the 1949 that our grandparents experienced. This is an alternate history, and one where WW2 still rages on. It’s also an alternate history drawing on Steampunk ideas and aesthetics, where battlefields clamour with the sounds of mechs and unlikely weaponry. Grit & Valor takes this setting and turns it into a real-time tactical roguelite, fusing ideas from games like Advance Wars and Into The Breach with small scale RTS games like Bad North into a new, mostly cohesive, whole.

Some things simply just make sense together. A union of two things that, after they’ve come together once, you can’t help but expect to see again and again. Many such iconic pairings spring to mind, like the roguelike genre and deck-building mechanics, DeviantArt creators from the early 2000s and OCs that are half-angel half-demon, or Nintendo Directs and not hearing any news about Silksong. The gaming industry is already obsessed with the setting of World War 2, but the inclusion of gian...