The studio behind Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden – The Bearded Ladies – have announced a release date for their next game: May 23rd. Miasma Chronicles is another post-apocalyptic tactical RPG, but this time it replaces the anthropomorphic pigs with a friendly robot – who the trailer refers to as your big brother, I should add. Spiritually rather than biologically, of course. If you’re not sold yet, Miasma Chronicles will be showing up to tomorrow’s Future Games Show.
So if you’re not running around with mutated Donald Ducks, what’s the premise with this one? Well, in the not-too-distant future, in a ruined America, an evil force known only as the Miasma has messed everything up and presumably killed a lot of people. The Miasma’s just a gooey ethereal substance, but it’s led to an environmental collapse that sucks for the game’s inhabitants – although it’s produced some gorgeous landscapes for us to explore.
We play Elvis (not that one) and his aforementioned mecha-bro in a quest to find their mum, all while using the Miasma-controlling glove she’s blessed us with, as well as a Badass Lady TM called Jade, and a head in a jar. Of course, your gang can’t just fight disemboided goo for the entire game’s run time, so Miasma Chronicles has a of Gears Of War-esque brutes that scrabble out of the ground, and look like frogs at certain angles. Maybe there’ll be a dash of mutants here after all.
Apart from all of that, Miasma has everything you’d expect from The Bearded Ladies. You’ll be walking around in real-time, before engaging in XCOM-style turn-based combat that’s not dissimilar to the fighting in Mutant Year Zero.
The RPS Treehouse have enjoyed both of The Bearded Ladies’ previous games. Their breakout hit Mutant Year Zero made it onto our list of the best strategy games to play on PC. Their follow-up was 2020’s Corruption 2029, also a post-apocalyptic tactical RPG set in America. If it’s not broke, I guess? In her review, Sin called it “Mutant Year Zero without the mutants” and I’ll be interested to see if the same can be said of Miasma Chronicles.
Miasma Chronicles is launching on Steam and The Epic Games Store on May 23rd. It’ll also be hitting Xbox and PlayStation consoles on the same day, with a physical console release following in June.
