Tactical Mutant Ninja Turtles? Turn-based Mutant Ninja Tactics? I’m undecided, but its actual name is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, so maybe I should just call it that. It’s just been announced and it’s coming to PC next year.
I’m extremely onboard with this for two reasons. One, it’s a turn-based tactics game, and I always have a baseline of interest in them. Two, its battles apparently take just minutes to complete. It all looks a little bit Hoplite, at least in my head, and that was a truly wonderful turn-based roguelike with similarly bite-sized skirmishes. In Tactical Takedown, the missions are strung together in mini-campaigns, each one focused on a different Turtle with their own unique abilities.
I suppose the third reason I’m intrigued is that I was mad into Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, as the cartoon was called in the UK, when I was a kid. I had the figurines where their half-shells could open up and you could store their ninja stars (hero stars?) inside. Also that animated film last year, Mutant Mayhem, was pretty great.
There have been a bunch of Turtles games recently, including the revival of the beat ’em ups with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate, a sorta action RPG roguelike that came out last month, which I have installed but not yet played.
Here’s a fourth and final reason you might be interested in Tactical Takedown: it’s being developed by Strange Scaffold, the folks behind recent indine hits I Am Your Beast and Clickolding. It’s an unexpected matchup, and for now there’s more screenshots on Steam.