Videogames owe a lot to their tabletop counterparts, especially when it comes to turn-based strategy and tactics. But one of the best parts of fielding armies of little warriors often gets overlooked in the digital realm: model painting. Moonbreaker, from Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds, has rectified this frequent omission and then some, giving us something that feels pure tabletop on your PC.
Moonbreaker is a sci-fi-fantasy tactics romp in which you build a crew of unique characters, paint them just like you would real miniatures, summon them into 12-minute battles, and try to defeat the opposing crew’s captain. Your goal is simple, then, but beyond that is a whole lot of complexity, drawing from sources as diverse as Warhammer, the board game Cosmic Encounter, and Magic: The Gathering. And the moment you look at it, you’ll know you’re staring at a tabletop game. The way units move like they’re being picked up off the board, and the way the terrain looks like something built for a Warhammer 40k tournament – it’s unmistakable.
“We wanted to make something new,” says Unknown Worlds co-founder Charlie Cleveland. “We’re Unknown Worlds, we like to try crazy stuff. Maybe not that crazy. But we try to push things forward and keep things fresh. We’re making the world’s best digital miniatures game. We want to take the miniatures hobby and keep what is amazing about it, which is like all the analog part of it, the imagination part of it, the tactile, physical nature of it. But we want to remove all the other barriers, which are like this giant investment you have to make in money, time, rules, physical
