Ahead of the game’s official unveiling at the upcoming Star Wars Celebration in April, images from the the turn-based tactics game from Respawn Entertainment and Bit Reactor have appeared online. The XCOM influences are abundant, which is unsurprising given the number of XCOM veterans at Bit Reactor.
Bit Reactor and Respawn Are Working on a Game That Looks Like XCOM but Star Wars
The images were first discovered by gaming news outlet MP1st, who found the images within a Bit Reactor artist’s portfolio. The gameplay shown is reportedly dated to mid-2023, when the game went by the internal code name Bruno.
The screenshots show gameplay very reminiscent of the tactical, turn-based squad combat genre that XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 revitalized in the 2010s. In this kind of game, the player controls a squad of characters in turn-based combat, where each character has a limited number of actions and moves they can make. Even the iconic Mario franchise dipped its toes into the turn-based tactics genre with Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope.
The images of gameplay show the player controlling a Mandalorian character and targeting a Republic clone trooper, with a “95% hit chance” window above the enemy trooper. The window at the bottom of the screen shows a number of other combat actions the player could take, including the use of a thermal detonator (the Star Wars equivalent of a powerful grenade). Another images shows players using an ability taken straight from XCOM: overwatch. When a player activates overwatch on their turn, they wait for an enemy to move into their line of sight and fire automatically. An animated image also shows a makeshift headquarters, where the player can interact with an Armory, Holotable, Special Ops, or Black Market.
Respawn has been collaborating with Bit Reactor on the Star Wars tactical game project. The developers of the critically acclaimed Jedi series were previously working on a Star Wars shooter about a Mandalorian bounty hunter, before that project was canceled in February 2024.
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