What would happen if the whole world is wiped out in an apocalypse, leaving almost nothing but mutants and monsters in its wake? If your answer includes a talking humanoid duck with moth wings, your dystopian vision may align with developer The Bearded Ladies' upcoming turn-based strategy title, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden.

The studio, partly consisting of former Hitman and Payday developers, have crafted a dark world that is rife with darkness, stealth, strategic goodness — and humanoid animals. In this dark and gritty world, the player takes control of three characters at a time who are trying to survive. The story is a license based on a famous Swedish tabletop RPG game. We were able to see a brief, new gameplay demo at GamesCom 2018.

Mutant Year Zero is a mix of various different elements mashed together in a way that seems to make a lot of sense. Publisher Funcom loves to emphasize the title's XCOM-like gameplay, but the exploration, loot, and stealth segments layers in some additional dimensions. I'd liken Mutant Year Zero to a series that's still near and dear to my heart, Commandos, with an added XCOM battle system. The demo shown at GamesCom reinforced this notion.

Unlike XCOM, we have set characters who we can take into battle, all with their own stories and personalities. There's usually no permadeath.  Our base, the Ark, is a hub where we can use a variety of different shops to gear up and plan who to take on our next missions. Fast-travel lets us quickly jump between locations. It isn't necessarily an open world, but we can freely go from area to area and can choose our own approach to a given situation. This means we enter a stage and can freely navigate our team.

This is where stealth and exploration come in. We can scout the area, take out enemies quietly (if we have silenced guns), find new gear, or run in with guns blazing. It adds a level of suspense and tactics that was missing from XCOM. We can stealthily move all three characters into positions and use them based on their gear and mutant activities (more on that later) to take on different roles. Whatever happens, we want to stay hidden to have the first move in an ambush and to surprise the enemy, while having our team positioned to cover our flanks while still flanking the enemy from the shadows.

Mutant Year Zero has four difficulties, and the hardest one is named after Funcom CEO Casais and features permadeath (which will break the story a little, but it's there from the beginning). Be aware that all characters, especially the three main ones shown so far, have a role or dialogue options, and some won't make sense if you kill them off. It's a deliberate decision, according to Mark Parker and Haraldur Thormundsson from The Bearded Ladies Consulting. If the player wants a challenge, he or she has to live with the consequences. Every story sequence has dialogue for every character, and they will interact with each other regardless of whether you're alone or in a squad of three. If almost all of them are dead, it might not make sense, though.

We played a demo that showcased a section in an underground tunnel with duck mutant Dux, pig mutant Bormin, and the horned Selma. Dialogue sequences briefly reinforced their characters, judged the current situation, or remarked that they haven't  yet seen similarly mutated individuals in this dark world. The gameplay is very similar to XCOM, so anyone familiar with one could play the other without an introduction. Whether you're engaged in tactical combat or stealth mode, the game makes it very clear if you're in anyone's line of sight and who you can hit via rays cast from your character. There are also clear statistics about your hit and critical percentages. Although XCOM's UI was already great, Mutant Year Zero may do an even better job in some places. Enemy diversity may be a bit samey, though. Almost all enemies we've seen so far are ghouls, and in this demo, we also saw a medical robot with varying attacks that requires some different approaches.

Pyro Ghouls throw Molotov cocktails and explode in fire upon death. Medical robots, on the other hand, are pretty strong and heal teammates. From what we can gather, the AI works solidly when enemies are flanking our positions. There's a sprinkle of bad choices here and there, and sometimes enemies would walk out of cover for no apparent reason.

Apart from the usual arsenal of guns and grenades, we also have several special skills at our disposal. (We are mutants, after all.) Over the course of the game, we gain mutant points, which we can use to invest in a skill tree for the individual characters to make them more potent in battle. Bormin can remove an enemy's cover, while sharpshooter Dux can grow moth wings to gain a vertical advantage, and Selma can entice enemies to attack her. These are only three examples, but there are a few neat abilities that change our tactical approach and the way the game is played.

Taken as a whole, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is a very solid and fun tactical game that has its own identity, even given its similarities to XCOM. It's more of a bare-bones experience, that clearly focuses on gameplay over other elements and has a raw charm that makes it difficult to put down. It'll have to show that it can maintain the challenge and interesting encounters over its whole runtime. I'm looking forward to finding out when Mutant Year Zero hits on Dec. 4 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.