What do you get when you throw XCOM, Valkyria Chronicles, and Edge of Tomorrow (the awesome Tom Cruise movie) into a blender? The answer appears to be Every Day We Fight, the newest tactical strategy game published by Hooded Horse.
Developer Signal Space Lab, whose experience in the gaming space is wide and deep, is about to launch the genre-bending title into early access, and I’ve had the chance to play through its early hours ahead of the long-awaited Steam release. It’s both exactly what you’d expect and a surprising twist on a well-known formula, which could set it up to become yet another win for Hooded Horse and a sleeper hit once it hits 1.0 a year from now. (That’s the plan, at least.)
If you didn’t catch that Edge of Tomorrow reference, allow me to confirm something before I dig deeper into the chunk of Every Day We Fight I’ve played: It’s a time loop story. Unsurprisingly, this is linked to a roguelite structure. This means you’ll die a lot. But it’s part of the deal, and defeat isn’t as crushing here as in Firaxis’ XCOM games. Don’t like losing almost everything when you die? There’s a ‘story mode’ that allows you to reload right before things went to hell as many times as you want. This doesn’t remove any of the game design’s built-in friction or lower the difficulty bar though. It only takes 30 minutes or so to realize Signal Space Lab wants players to engage with the game and truly fight for each victory.
It’d be silly to create a video game about the endless struggle of pushing back against an enemy who controls time that feels like a breeze to play through. Okay, maybe you can get away with it if you’re doing a linear, more cinematic experience, but a strategy title working with such a premise is forced to make players sweat. Every Day We Fight’s other main defining feature is the ability to manually shoot aliens in the face. Enemies might fail to land easy shots on you at times, but you can’t blame chance for missing an attack that would be marked as 99% positive in XCOM. Weapons with unique stats are worth finding and should be used in different ways though.
This also applies to ‘overwatch’ reactions as seen in other tactical strategy games. If an enemy crosses an area guarded by one of your resistance fighters, you need to make the most of that opportunity, so put the phone down and focus on the game. It’s the sort of more involved turn-based gameplay the Valkyria Chronicles series has expanded upon in the past, and that alone makes Every Day We Fight exciting to play. You’ll also be happy to hear gamepad support is already solid, though I found myself sticking with mouse and keyboard to better land those real-time headshots as enemies duck behind cover.
Of course, many other actions, like moving, reloading, and using grenades, play out in more traditional fashion. As for the non-combat sections, real-time exploration around a vast city map takes precedence. At this stage, the environments, combat scenarios, loot pool, and whatnot aren’t fully fleshed out. The full vision behind Every Day We Fight shines through, but we’re aware it’ll be a while before both the roguelite structure and plot are completely baked. What’s interesting is there’s a lot of game included already. This isn’t a thin slice of early access, but a wide and meaty experience that’s just rough and incomplete in places. This might entice many players to push onwards through the acts available so far, but personally, I’m saving a proper playthrough for later, once all the pieces have fallen into place.
Every Day We Fight also looks and feels like the sort of early access game that deserves that sort of respect. While I can’t predict where the story is going and how it’ll become bigger with content updates, there’s a solid hook – a war between two nations frozen by alien invaders that have ‘captured in time’ an entire city – present from the get-go. The trio of protagonists (average citizens turned fighters who feel like archetypes more than anything) isn’t the most compelling, but the mystery at the centre of the conflict and the setting are.
On the other hand, I believe a stronger, more distinct art direction would go a long way towards making Every Day We Fight far easier to sell. The alien designs aren’t different enough from what you’d find in modern XCOM titles, and the human characters have a ‘background NPC’ look to them that makes them profoundly unremarkable. At least the studio hasn’t gone with a corporate-approved, fake punk aesthetic as seen in many many recent AAA disasters, but some sort of redesigns would be welcomed here. This isn’t a knock on the graphical quality itself, which shouldn’t be judged this early into the early access journey. Expect performance hiccups too.
I’ve enjoyed my time with Every Day We Fight so far, and there’s little else I can say at the moment. Tactical strategy diehards might find a future favourite in this one already, but my recommendation for the more casual crowd is to hold off until we can confirm whether the narrative and its randomized systems are going somewhere. Hooded Horse continues to have a good eye for finding projects with something to say and/or offer in the strategy games space, and Signal Space Lab’s riff on well-known tactics appears to be on the right track to become at least intriguing.
Every Day We Fight (early access) launches on Steam on July 10, 2025. The price tag might change over the course of development. The team is expecting to remain in early access for roughly a year.
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