I'm a big fan of turn-based tactics and strategy games, be they my beloved XCOM, Marvel Midnight Suns, Into the Breach, or plenty more besides, so I was definitely intrigued when I first heard about Star Wars Zero Company, the newest addition to the genre set within George Lucas' iconic galaxy far, far away. However, after a chance to speak with two of the leading minds behind Zero Company and playing a preview build of the game for the best part of a week, there's a clear desire on behalf of the developer, Bit Reactor, not to just be yet another in the endless "tactical" morass.
"I want people to think 'this is a great game', I don't want to think of it as a tactics game," says game director Greg Foertsch, who feels modern gaming tastes extend beyond genre. "I don't want to think of it as anything else. I think gamers are more sophisticated now." He goes on to compare it to developing musical tastes, the way that Spotify playlists and similar have exposed people to new songs that they might otherwise have missed, enriching them in the process.
Planning the approach
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Talking with Foertsch and narrative director Aaron Contreras, confidence in their audience's literacy comes up more than once, even if it's in the strangely niche inspirations behind it. "We want to build on [Star Wars] from what we've already seen in the TV and film," explains Contreras. "So screwball comedy, film noir, mid-century spy, John LeCarre stuff. I was just bombarding my writing team with influences from there. Our main character is called Hawks, explicitly as an homage to Howard Hawks, who's the director of movies like His Girl Friday or Only Angels Have Wings."
The latter, about a group of pilots in the 1930s, is a major touchstone for Zero Company, which focuses on a mercenary strike force during the Clone Wars who put aside their ideological differences to shoot people for money. "When I joined, we already had the notion of the team that would eventually be named Zero Company operating in this liminal space between the front lines and covert operations, sort of in the middle," says Contreras "That naturally lends itself to a tactical strategy game where you've got people going out and doing sneaky stuff, but you're also doing shooty-shooty all the time."
That murky, grey space is a recurring theme in Zero Company, with your advisors and employers all holding differing worldviews (or galaxyviews, perhaps) and may consequently get shirty with you depending on the choices you make – the choice of whether to hand over a snitch to an enraged mobster springs to mind. "The Clone Wars, for lots of reasons, was just a really natural fit," says Foertsch. "The political climate, all the guardedness of everybody. You don't know who to trust. Like the biases, political and non-political, that people had really lent itself to us telling this kind of story."
Having played it myself, I wouldn't say that Zero Company is a politically charged-game, not in the way that Andor was. Politics exist within the game, but they're largely presented in the same vein as sports teams, and protagonist Hawks pointedly doesn't care who's side you're on as long as they're shooting lasers in the right direction. "If you're a good pilot and you're there when we need you, you're one of us," says Contreras, speaking for their hero.
I pretty much said, 'if you want me to come on board, Greg, we need to have a character who's driving the story, who's there, who's on the ground, because that's who we empathize with in Star Wars.'
Aaron Contreras
That tense collaboration will definitely be familiar to those experienced in the tactical strategy genre. Foertsch was the art director for genre titans XCOM 2 and Enemy Unknown before leaving Firaxis and founding Bit Reactor, with gameplay headed up by fellow XCOM veteran and Marvel Midnight Suns alum James Brawley.
XCOM definitely casts a long shadow, perhaps even more than Star Wars itself. I'm steering a small strike force through turn-based encounters, dashing between cover and firing at aliens, before grabbing a paycheck and returning to headquarters to knock together new facilities and hand out different flavors of grenade. But despite gamers being "more sophisticated" than they used to be, there's a clear effort being made to open up Zero Company to gamers who might normally be a bit intimidated by a more niche genre.
Having a player-made hero on the battlefield, rather than micro-managing through earpieces, was part of that effort to adapt, and non-negotiable to Contreras. "I pretty much said, 'if you want me to come on board, Greg, we need to have a character who's driving the story, who's there, who's on the ground, because that's who we empathize with in Star Wars. You're there with Han and Leia and Luke in the field. If we have an avatar character, that character needs to be there on the ground.'"
Do, or do not
It's for that reason that permadeath, often a staple of the genre, was nearly abandoned in the design phase. "We had a healthy debate around that, and at times I took the perspective that we should pull it," says Contreras. "I'm really happy we landed where we did with permadeath, and I'm very happy it's part of the game."
I am too. Permadeath is a sharper edge in a game that is perhaps a little too eager to sand them down, at least in my experience of it so far. Run, take cover, shoot if you have a target, go to overwatch if you don't. These are very familiar beats, and while Zero Company can certainly be fun, it doesn't yet gel with these ambitious goals and inspirations, nor entirely match with an earlier presentation from Foertsch that bordered on fiery, when he said that "the tactics genre has the most potential to be innovative, the most room to grow," and said "this is where the genre until now had just scratched the surface," when it came to providing cinematic experiences.
That's not to say that Zero Company is without its wildcard elements. Jedi and Astromech droids later join the team, allowing you to roll a quartet of beeping, quasi-sentient mailboxes into a firefight and wish them good luck, which is undeniably entertaining and hopefully a sign of greater creativity to come, particularly in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 world where turn-based dynamics have returned to the mainstream.
Space combat, perhaps? "No, we've done some games before that had interception and stuff," says Foertsch, referring to XCOM. "Each game kind of dictates what it needs, and in this case, that was one of the things, like fog of war, that just wasn't something that made sense to us early on."
Despite its simplicity, I still enjoyed my preview of Zero Company, and hope it carves out more of an identity as it progresses past that first act. Foertsch's "sophisticated" comment sticks with me in part because I feel sure that a sophisticated audience could handle a more complex dish than what I've sampled so far.
Still, it was only a preview build, and whatever the final result, Bit Reactor's passion is undeniable. "We hope that's recognized by the audience and see that we're trying to honor this great legacy of the genre of strategy games while picking our battles about where we must step up."
Star Wars Zero Company is out on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC on August 27, 2026.
Want an early tactical fix before Zero Company flies into view? Find out the best strategy games you can play right now!
