BURNED HORIZONS

Burned Horizons is a turn-based tactical sandbox in which the player acts as the Operational Lead for NAFOSEC, a private military company, during a fictional Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2002. The player runs a team of contractors from a forward bivouac, handling equipment and making decisions during engagements in open sectors. The first theatre of operations is RDC-TRIDENT, where victories move front lines and failures have wider effects, with further theatres planned as the campaign expands.

Combat uses action points, suppression, overwatch and interrupts, and can be viewed from top-down, isometric or third-person perspectives. Wounds are modelled on physical trauma rather than a health bar: a leg hit affects movement, an arm hit affects aiming, and there is no regeneration. Keeping operators alive involves applying tourniquets, stabilising injuries and calling in CASEVAC or reinforcements. Psychological damage is tracked through a SCARs system, where accumulated or sudden trauma can alter how an operator behaves under fire, and where multiple SCARs interact unpredictably. Separate measures cover an operator’s standing within the company (UCD), how much others trust them (S-Grade) and their leadership capacity (Cohesion), each of which influences how squads respond during operations. Equipment has weight and coverage consequences, with plate carriers, rigs and rucksacks affecting protection, reload speed and stamina, and weapons can be modified with individual components such as optics, mounts and slings. Operators develop Pathways and Specialisations based on what they actually do in the field, with no experience point spending and no class restrictions. Standard Operating Procedures allow the difficulty, mechanical friction and campaign persistence to be adjusted from an Iron Man baseline, and the game includes modding support.

The developer has stated that Early Access is targeted for Q3/Q4 2026, with a planned exit in Q3/Q4 2027. Features intended for Early Access include logistics and trading, vehicles, base building, weather and day/night cycles, survival needs, prisoner capture, a fuller campaign system, custom-built maps replacing placeholders, localisation and initial modding tools. Post-1.0 plans include multiplayer with self-hosted servers, additional theatres and destructible environments. On Steam, the game currently holds a Mixed user review rating based on more than 50 reviews.