Dead Hand
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Dead Hand is a turn based tactical roguelike game set in a fully destructible procedural environment. Guide your Autonomous Weapons Platform in a fatalistic trek through a multiple level underground cave complex in order to fulfill your directives. Along the way you’ll explore abandoned caverns now populated by rogue robotic combat vehicles, scavenge parts to improve your weapons platform, engage in fearsome boss battles, and die multiple times in the process.
- Tense and engaging tactical combat and exploration.
- Modular combat vehicles, scavenge parts from neutralized enemies and upgrade your weapons platform.
- Gear based progression. No XP and no levels, your weapons platform is literally the sum of its parts.
- Old school turn based Action Points management.
- Freeform movement, no hexagonal or square tiles.
- Simulated projectile ballistics (no abstract and arbitrary “to-hit” chances) with triangle accurate collision detection.
- Fully destructible cavernous environment, dig foxholes to protect yourself from enemy fire or punch through your foes’ cover with explosives!
- Procedural level generation for maximum replayability.
- No metaprogression. The difficulty becomes more manageable as your skills and knowledge of the game improve, not as you grind your time away.
- Permadeath.
Game Discussion
Steam User 2
Dead Hand is probably the closest thing to a vehicular horror game that I've played. You control a robot whose sole purpose for existence is to tunnel through caves until it can launch a heavily guarded nuclear missile from deep within the earth. Combat is incredibly lethal, and a single enemy can kill you in one turn if you're not careful. Enemies can come from any direction (even underneath you!) and they also can't be seen unless they're within your line of sight or they're close enough to be picked up on short-range radar, which adds to the tension. Every vehicle type has a weight limit to how much it can carry, which often leads to the player being forced to make difficult decisions - often you'll have to dump weapons and ammo in order to pick up and install new hulls, so inventory management is key. To top it all off, if you don't reach the end of a level within a certain number of turns (which varies by difficulty) you will be relentlessly hunted down by nigh unstoppable killing machines. Combine all of that with a dark ambient/industrial soundtrack, and you'll get the oppressive atmosphere created by Dead Hand.
Of course, it's not perfect, and there are a few things that I wish were different - the levels can be a little bare after you've played them enough, and the UI is pretty basic. One smaller thing that I do really love however is the camera. You have a regular top down camera that's standard in most turn based games, but you can also freely control the camera in order to better see where things are/line up shots/etc. Having the option to play through an entire level while keeping the camera close to your vehicle is incredibly atmospheric and creates a very different experience.
Dead Hand is a unique game that is definitely not for everyone, but if you're interested in challenging/tactical turn based strategy games then I would very highly recommend it.