Announced just this week by CookieByte Entertainment—the same clever folks behind Fort Triumph—Tattered Banners is an upcoming open-world tactical RPG looking to turn the mercenary life into a high-stakes game of “how much can I mess up this kingdom before it collapses?”
Set to hit Steam Early Access in October 2026, the game puts you in charge of a mercenary company in a living, breathing simulated medieval world. This isn’t just a map with icons for you to click on. It’s a sandbox where the world actually reacts to your nonsense. If you decide to torch a farm because a rival noble paid you to, you won’t just get a gold reward and move on. That farm’s destruction might trigger a famine in the local city, which leads to refugees flooding the roads, which then creates a power vacuum for bandits to move in. Every choice ripples outward, meaning you aren’t just fighting battles; you’re effectively rewriting the history of the realm with every swing of an axe.
What’s really cool is how you progress. Instead of just grinding for XP to unlock a skill tree, Tattered Banners ties your growth to the world itself. You might learn how to effectively raid caravans only after you actually team up with a bandit leader to pull one off. Or maybe a forest witch teaches you how to poison wells because she’s tired of the local village encroaching on her turf. It makes the progression feel organic and earned, rather than just filling up a bar.
The combat is turn-based tactics at its core, but the context is everything. Because the world is simulated, your battles are shaped by your reputation and the current state of the region. Leading a siege on a starving castle is a very different experience than trying to smuggle goods past a well-funded guard detail in a booming trade hub. It’s a gritty, procedural narrative machine that seems designed to give you those “you won’t believe what happened in my campaign” stories.
With playtests expected to roll out before the Q4 2026 launch, it’s definitely time to keep an eye on this one. It’s looking like the perfect bridge between the tight mercenary management of Wartales and the emergent, brutal storytelling of Battle Brothers.
