Grit & Valor - 1949 is a WWII RTS roguelite with mechs

As a casual WWII roguelite with mechs, Grit & Valor - 1949 fits a very specific box in the real-time strategy genre. It’s also a departure for UK developer Milky Tea Studios, which released the four-player arena combat game HyperBrawl Tournament in 2020 and the comedic scooter-racer Coffin Dodgers in 2015. By comparison, Grit & Valor is more sobering in tone and gameplay, landing somewhere in the vicinity of Into the Breach and BattleTech. I had the chance to play a Steam demo for the game as it heads toward a 2025 release, and while it certainly has room for improvement, this upcoming single-player RTS has a lot of potential.

Through gritted teeth

As its name suggests, Grit & Valor - 1949 exists in a loose alternate timeline of World War II that did not end in 1945. Instead, New Germany has conquered much of Europe using mechs, but a resistance of remaining Allied forces has formed in Scotland to fight back. A team of pilots have learned how to operate a squad of stolen mechs and have been given the dangerous mission of escorting a command ship that will deliver an EMP blast in the enemy’s headquarters. It’s a rather silly premise despite the dire circumstances, though the story doesn’t take itself too seriously. This game isn’t about heavy subjects, like geopolitics, war crimes, or the oppressive Nazi regime. It’s mainly about shooting bad guys with giant robots.

Successfully transporting the payload into the heart of New Germany requires that players get through four campaigns, each of which takes place in a different region of Europe. Only the first of these campaigns, the British Isles, was available in the demo, but the roguelite loop becomes clear within an hour. Every runthrough has players begin at headquarters, where pilots, mechs, and equipment can be examined and upgraded, before selecting between various forked paths that have different sets of challenges. This continues until they reach the final boss at the end of the region. Most challenges involve combat, while others provide helpful options, like restoring a mech’s health or giving pilots more ability charges. Facing defeat at any point will end the run immediately, but still award valor and scrap that are used to improve pilots and mechs with permanent upgrades back at base.

Vim and vigor

To claim victory in a battle, players need to survive six waves of enemies while hopefully completing an optional objective for extra rewards. This means defending the command ship, which acts like the king piece in chess, and ordering mechs to the proper spaces as quickly as possible. Several seconds before each wave, a notification of where helicopters will generally arrive to drop enemies on the battlefield is shown, giving a brief period of time to form a defense. Hiding behind cover, getting higher ground, and selecting the right class of mechs to fight the enemy will give the player an advantage. But since mechs can’t fire until they are in position, for better or worse, it’s important to get any units into place so that they can deal damage the moment enemy troops arrive. While players can technically pause the game, no orders can be given during that time, so every second on the field counts.

Both enhancements and pilot abilities give players a better chance to survive, which is important since damage isn’t healed between fights by default. After every successful battle, players can select one of three enhancements that last for the entire runthrough and typically upgrade a particular class of units by increasing damage and giving them the ability to inflict status effects. If players are able to conquer more difficult combat challenges, the selection of enhancements will be of higher rarity. On top of that, pilots can use special abilities, like self-healing, mine deployment, and leaps that deal area-of-effect damage upon landing. These powers, however, can only be used a limited number of times during a run, so it’s worth saving them for the final boss.

Ready for enhancements

Where the game needs vast improvement is in the clarity of its descriptions. When a pilot ability says that it heals damage, it doesn’t state for how much nor for how long the recovery takes. Some status effects increase damage to an enemy, but it’s unclear how long the effect lasts and how much damage is boosted. There’s also a damage bonus for units attacking on higher ground, but yet again, it’s unclear by how much. Moreover, the attack range of a pilot ability and a mech's weapon needs to be more clearly shown, perhaps by marking specific squares on the grid with a particular pattern or color when the unit is selected. This general lack of detail greatly hinders players from making optimal choices on the battlefield.

Across the board, Grit & Valor needs to introduce more elements of surprise with each run. This includes adding more enemy units, random points of interest on the battlefield, coming up with objectives that aren’t about defending a point or delivering fuel, and providing more unusual options for enhancements and mech upgrades. At the moment, the reward for completing an advanced combat challenge, which boils down to an enhancement that will disappear anyway, isn’t worth the risk. The command ship could be given much more to do as a unit as well. Apart from being able to make very minor repairs on mechs, it’s effectively a sack of potatoes players need to spend time dragging around. It’s too easy to tuck the command ship in a defensible position at the start of a battle and then forget that it exists.

Since every second matters on the field, the game should investigate ways for players to give commands to the entire squad. In its current state, only one unit can be given orders at any time, and there’s no way to select a group of units to move in tandem. This decision might be intentional to keep things simple, but it also wastes precious seconds on the clock while players scramble to mount a defense.

So far, Grit & Valor - 1949 has the basic framework to become a solid RTS with cool mechs and roguelite gameplay. The concept of controlling a small squad of units in a tight battlefield against waves of enemies holds a lot of promise. The game just needs to add more clarity and much more variety before it’s fully ready for deployment. Grit & Valor is set to release in 2025 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. A demo for the game is now available on Steam.

This preview is based on a Steam demo of the game using both a controller and a keyboard-and-mouse setup. The game is still in active development.

Nick Tan

Contributing Editor

Once upon a time, Nick's parents confiscated his Super Nintendo because he was "playing it too much." He has secretly sworn revenge ever since. Nick is now a freelance writer for various video game sites. Powered by iced green tea, he typically plays RPGs of all kinds like Shin Megami Tensei, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout. In his spare time, he follows the latest season of Critical Role.