The brilliant time-manipulating tactical shooter 'All Walls Must Fall' has a big update and release date

I'm a big fan of All Walls Must Fall [Steam, itch.io], a crazy mix of strategy and RPG with some time-manipulating mechanics that's powered by Unreal Engine 4. It had a big update recently and they've also revealed the final launch date.

While the basic gameplay will seem familiar to anyone who has played any sort of tactical strategy game before, the way it works is vastly different. Not everything needs to resort to violence, the conversation system is pretty clever with you being able to charm your way into locked rooms and more. For those unfamiliar, the original trailer is below:

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For this update they've done a bunch of finishing up work on the story, which is played out across four arcs, each having three missions for you to do. They are each self-contained and are all connected in some way to a TV tower bombing that sets the scene at the beginning of the campaign.

They've also added a new type of mission named "Identify Target", which might get more than a little confusing. The developer said "Without giving too much away, let’s just say you might think you’re seeing double.".

One thing I did noticed from the previous version, is that there wasn't a great deal of variety to the layout of the clubs you visit. Now, there is! They've expanded clubs to have a much bigger variety in their sizes, with them getting larger further into the campaign.

You might also find the game a little more challenging now, with patrolling enemies from the beginning of missions and scanners that will detect weapons. The scanners are interesting, since they don't always immediately alarm enemies, but they make some noise and enemies that come past will be alerted.

Not that I'm personally bothered, but they've also added in a filter for profanity and nudity, I guess some people don't appreciate it. It doesn't bother me though, I play it as they intended and I love it.

For the official launch to leave Early Access, they've put down a release for February 23rd so it's coming quite soon. Check out the release notes here for this recent update.

I've enjoyed it a lot so far, especially as a fan of strategy games it's great to play one that firmly breaks the mould. A recent highlight was a moment a weaponized drone and an enemy bodyguard were both attacking. My agent got injured, so I warped time back a bit and I knew where the bodyguard was going to fire, so I instantly moved away a little which made the drone follow me right into the enemy fire—putting it out of action!

There's lots of random fun moments like that since you're playing with time, undoing actions and unlocking new abilities to play with time even more. One such ability named "Trace Back" enables you to rewind yourself, but keep the rest of the world as it is, as opposed to the initial undo action which affects everyone. So it's essentially a personal time-travel device, which is pretty sweet when you're in a tough spot. You could be surrounded by enemies and pick them off one by one, even if you die, you just do a Trace Back and continue killing them. You do have limits though, which are your Time Units you gather through the mission. Run out and there's no time manipulation for you.

Initially, I thought unlocking that power made me quite overpowered, even with the limited time resource—until I met a Spectre in battle. As they teleported all over the place, I kept firing and missing and using Trace Back to try and get them. You think you've hit them with a shot—nope, they're already somewhere else. They certainly kept me on my toes. I was hoping to get a look at the new Identify Target mission type, but those Spectres really kicked my ass.

It's currently 50% off on both itch.io and Steam. It's one I can happily recommend even before the final release. It has a familiar feel in the basics, but it really does play like nothing else.