A gritty, turn-based tactical sandbox set in 2002. No XP grind. No class rails. No buy-your-way skill trees. // 'They said it wasn't our war. So we made it ours.'
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
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The radio crackles. Contact, two hundred meters, tree line. Your team hits the dirt before you finish the thought. This isn't the first firefight your squad's walked into, and it won't be the last one that leaves a mark.
Burned Horizons™ is a turn-based tactical sandbox set in the early 2000s, where nothing resets and every decision follows your operators home. You don't run missions, you run squads: hired, supplied, and rotated across entire theaters of war. What happens in one AO doesn't stay there.
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"It's not just about winning the battle; it's about surviving the war, with all the scars that entails." - Gungho Cowboy, Popular Airsoft
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Combat leaves more than wounds. Flashpoints build quietly over time, small marks that accumulate until they harden into SCARS, lasting psychological effects that sharpen an operator's reflexes or break their trust, steady a trigger hand or shake it apart.
Some strike instantly, surviving an ambush that wipes your squad
Others creep in slowly
Some combine into something worse
No two operators carry the same war.
Operators don't just fight, they rely on each other. Trust builds and erodes between squadmates based on what they live through together, and a squad that doesn't trust its team lead or each other fights differently than one that does.
Wounds are modeled after how the body actually breaks down, not a depleting number that regenerates on its own. Getting your people home means calling in CASEVAC and treating them properly, not waiting out a cooldown.
A hit to the leg changes how an operator moves
A hit to the arm changes how they shoot
"That's a permanent souvenir, a little something to remember the holiday by." — Gungho Cowboy, Popular Airsoft
Plate carriers, chest rigs, and rucksacks aren't cosmetic; armor placement matters, and what you carry affects what you can do. Weapons are moddable down to real components, sights, slings, and attachments that change how a weapon actually handles. Build a loadout for the mission in front of you, not a fixed kit.
Operators grow through what they actually do in the field, not a static class you pick once. Experience organically opens new pathways and specializations over time, shaped by the missions they've run and the choices they've made.
Your operators fight across sprawling, persistent theaters, not isolated missions.
RDC-TRIDENT, 2002: Ukraine, at the start of a brutal Russian invasion
Victories shift front lines
Failures ripple outward
Other theaters open as the campaign expands
Burned Horizons defaults to a hard, unforgiving experience, no health regen, no easy outs. But it's your war to run. SOP settings let you tune the experience to how you want to play, from a brutal Iron Man default to something more forgiving, without changing the core of what the game is.
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Deep tactical combat: action points, suppression, overwatch, interrupts
Realistic wounding system, no health bars, no auto-heal
CASEVAC and reinforcement support called in from the field
Full armor and loadout system: plate carriers, rigs, rucksacks
Deep weapon modding: real components, attachments, and slings
Pathway specializations that grow from what your operators actually do
Squad trust and cohesion that shifts based on shared experience
Switch perspectives: top-down, isometric, or third-person
Fully customizable SOP settings, tune the difficulty and experience to you
Full modding support: sliders, toggles, and beyond
Persistent squads and consequences that carry across the campaign
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Early Access is where the deeper layers take shape:
Logistics and supply networks, buying, selling, and trading gear
Wider AI behaviors
Strategic movement and maneuver
Advanced operator systems
Vehicles and mobility
Deeper wounding and SCARS integration
Deepening triage and recovery systems
Full mission and operational campaign system
Replacing generic placeholder maps with large, custom-built AOs, progressively expanding to fill out the full RDC-TRIDENT theater
Full persistence framework
Exploring a real-time planning phase, and potentially a plan-and-execute turn-based mode
SPARQ command and team management system
Base building, growing from a patrol base into forward operating infrastructure
Prisoner capture and recruit training
Weather and day/night systems, introduced early and deepened over time
Hunger and survival needs
Realistic tech progression, equipment follows historical timing where it applies, with room for operators to field-test, capture, or improvise gear ahead of its time, as real special operations units have always done
An ongoing authenticity pass, gradually replacing placeholder assets with assets that reflect the period accurately
Continued art passes, replacing placeholder and concept assets with original, final art
Localization for additional languages
Initial set of modding tools
BEYOND 1.0
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Our roadmap doesn't stop at full release. These are big undertakings in their own right, and anything that isn't as deep as we want it by 1.0 keeps growing from here:
Multiplayer and self-hosted server support
New RDCs (theaters of operation), each a new world tying into the one you already know, bringing new factions, gear, and vehicles with them
Destructible environments, and continued expansion of them even once introduced
Continued deepening of every system, art, weather, fog of war, base building, modding tools, and beyond, wherever EA didn't get us all the way there
HOLD THE LINE. ALWAYS FORWARD.
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Languages: English
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Momentum
Pace estimated from the game's recent review growth (our daily snapshots) at its own sales-per-review ratio — a momentum signal, not booked sales.