New XCOM-style tactical military RPG hits Steam with launch discount and promising reviews

Most XCOM players have a story about the 95% shot that missed. Warhounds, which recently launched on Steam on 11 August 2026, is built around the promise that this will not happen to you.

The game has been developed by Everplay DMCC and published by Brightika. It's a single-player tactics game that replaces percentage hit rolls with real ballistics — lines of fire, flank angles and destructible cover determine outcomes, and there are no point-blank misses. Cone overwatch and verticality basically round out the combat part. Five classes (Assault, Specialist, Sniper, Machine Gunner, Grenadier) are deployable across an alternate-future East Africa campaign. A hijacked cargo ship is used as a mobile base for recruitment, logistics, medical and faction diplomacy. Missions can last from 25 to 40 minutes. Early reception is pretty promising: "Mostly Positive" across 271 reviews, at 74% positive. It costs $34.99, with 15% off through 25 August.

Warhounds asks for a GTX 1070 Ti or RX 5700 with 8 GB of VRAM, plus 8 GB of system RAM and 85 GB of storage. It's relatively steeper for a turn-based game.

Then there is the part the store page leaves out. Warhounds is the international version of Sparta 2035, developed by Russian studio Lipsar Studio and restricted to Russian and CIS Steam purchases in January 2026. Sparta 2035 received roughly 90 million rubles (~$1.06 million) from the Institute for Internet Development against a stated 200 million ruble (~$2.37 million) budget, as per Kommersant. The IRI was established in 2015 with presidential administration backing and shows up on EU, UK, Canadian, Australian and Swiss sanctions listings.

However, the Steam page names neither game nor studio. The international build adds English voice acting, reworked dialogue and more customization than before. You can read more about Warhounds on its Steam store page here.