What is it about alt-history 1900s North America that makes it such a fascinating backdrop for games like Nightmare Frontier?
Well, I look at the ones that came before. Weird West, an isometric immersive sim/old-school RPG hybrid, embraced the decaying culture of the death rattles of the Old West, and mixing in some paranormal craziness just felt right for that. Similarly, Hunt: Showdown took the spirit of bounty hunters and rogues of legend and gave them a twisted, fresh purpose, hunting unspeakable monsters in disease-ridden Louisiana.
Both games’ developers knew what a goldmine the period and continent were for building their respective worlds. Nightmare Frontier, from Ice Code Games, combines the approaches of both games to create my favorite kind of RPG: a horror-led, tactical turn-based one.
You take control of a band of scavengers up against Dreadweavers; beings made manifest from collective fears. The Dreadweavers’ presence has corrupted the landscape, and only your band of less-than-merry men can turnt he tide and reclaim the land by showing courage and leadership.
Nightmare Frontier is also an extraction shooter like Hunt: Showdown, albeit one you’re solely in control of. Ice Code Games proudly claims this is the first tactical Extraction Looter, and look, in this age of genre-mashing madness, I’m not going to waste time questioning that. The more important question is whether the developer pulls off its genre fusion.
To which the answer is, in this Early Access stage, yes… albeit with caveats. That’s understandable given the game is still cooking. Some aspects fall a little short, allowing for a focus on the big, important core concept. That’s the right way to go about Early Access. Features such as enemy AI variety and general world diversity are currently limited. Still, the point is that they convey the message effectively about what Nightmare Frontier could be one day, and they are servicable enough to do that job at present. Let’s hope it decides against using AI to achieve that, having already utilized it to tweak the variety of assets.
Taking back the city is tough. There’s irreparable damage done to it thanks to the Dreadweavers, but being scavengers, your team is out to make the most of it. But the deeper you go into what is now Dreadweaver territory, the worse the threats you’ll face. The upside is a better opportunity for more loot, but in true extraction game fashion, pushing your luck has deadly repercussions.
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Tactical play takes on many forms in Nightmare Frontier as a result. The temptation to press on beyond what is needed is always in play, and if you want to do that, you’d better be good at adapting to your environment and knowing when enough is enough.
With creatures born from your characters’ fears, there are going to be battles that would be foolish to pursue. To Ice Code Games’ credit, it has allowed for a degree of player freedom in deciding which paths to take without nudging too hard when there’s a seemingly straightforward and sensible path to follow.
The rewards are plentiful. The Dreadweavers’ handiwork often gives you the materials to forge wild new weaponry. Much like the game is a mixture of 1900s North America and paranormal terrors, so too are these weapons. There are several compelling reasons I can bring up XCOM when discussing turn-based tactical games, and these weapons are a good enough one to mention here. In Firaxis’ games, the fusion of alien tech and humanity’s own led to a turning of the tide with a human cost. It’s already quite similar here, but coupled with the narrative device of pushing back against an invasive force, it ticks my XCOM boxes. Hopefully, this is a good sign for the future of Nightmare Frontier.
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Speaking of Firaxis, Nightmare Frontier features environmental tactics that evoke those in Midnight Suns. You can knock foes about, crashing them into things. There’s also a paceier fluidity to the action, so doing this adds some kinetic energy to the whole thing.
There’s a lot of promise in Nightmare Frontier at this burgeoning stage. At times, it’s already feeling good enough to rival the top tier of turn-based tactical RPGs, but much depends on how Ice Cold Games forges the path ahead. I hope the developers take their time fleshing out this game and putting in the same craft and care that they invested in the core of the experience. Three big updates have been set for the next year already, and returning to Nightmare Frontier could be a whole different scavenger hunt by then.
Nightmare Frontier is out now in Early Access on PC via Steam.
