If you were to guess the studio most likely to be making a turn-based Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tactics game, who would you choose? Chances are you didn’t say the studio behind first-person unsettler Clickolding. But that’s just what we’re getting, in the form of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown. And honestly it looks rather nice, if the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted debut trailer is any indication.
Granted, indie team Strange Scaffold has produced a lot of games over the past few years in addition to Clickolding (including recent gems like El Paso, Elsewhere and I Am Your Beast), across an enormous range of genres. Xalavier Nelson Jr. and crew seem like they can pull off pretty much anything given a few month’s head start, and this does look like an interesting take on the tactics genre.
Promising "fast-paced encounters" that "only take minutes to complete," Tactical Takedown looks almost as much like a puzzle game as a traditional tactics one. Especially as the combat shown in the trailer only features a single Turtle at a time. Strange Scaffold says that each Turtle will have their own mini-campaign and have a unique move set to solve their problems, so long as those problems take the form of colour-coded, potentially robotic ninjas.
If I had to compare it to something else recent, it would be the single-character, close-combat brawling of Fights In Tight Spaces, but minus the deckbuilding bits. Until there’s some long-form gameplay footage to pick apart, speculation is all we’ve got. One thing that IS clear, however, is the charming aesthetic. The battlegrounds are set up like little tabletop dioramas, and the characters as plastic miniatures with black bases that get knocked loose on death. I also rather like how characters snap between dynamic poses rather than animating.
Still, if you’ll allow me a little wild speculation, I can’t help but notice that TMNT: Tactical Takedown looks more than a bit like Strange Scaffold’s previously-announced Teenage Demon Slayer Society, right down to the cute pseudo-tabletop aesthetics and chunky plastic bases on the ‘miniatures’. Has one game morphed into the other, or perhaps this could be considered a spinoff? Either way, it’s interesting to see the small studio getting a big-name license and doing something offbeat with it.
There’s no hard release date yet for TMNT: Tactical Takedown yet beyond ‘2025’, but those intrigued by its oddball concepts can wishlist it now on Steam.
