Space Hulk: Tactics promises a fresh spin on a classic

Cyanide are a strange little studio. The French outfit was originally brought on by Focus to develop Blood Bowl after their own imitation, Chaos League, caught on to some small success across Europe. Ever since, they've carved out a niche developing both Games Workshop properties and a few of their own, such as the Styx series.

Their next project is something near and dear to my heart. After a few ropey adaptations from other studios, Cyanide are trying their hand at adapting board game classic Space Hulk to the PC, plus an extra little twist of their own.

As with the past few digital adaptations of Space Hulk, Tactics is primarily based on the drum-tight (if a little unpredictable, but that's great for 1v1 play) rules of the original board game, albeit with a little wrinkle. In Tactics, both players have access to decks of game-affecting cards, some of which allow you to customize units before a match begins, while others trigger events on the board once the game is in action.

It'll be interesting to see how these cards will be earned and unlocked, if at all. The cynic in me says that it may be yet another random booster/loot crate scenario, but this is entirely conjecture, and I hope that my gut feeling is wrong on that point. Beyond that, Space Hulk: Tactics will offer both Marine and Genestealer single-player campaigns to cut your teeth on, plus a map editor allowing you to create and share new scenarios, both for online or solo play. That alone is a definite improvement over selling map packs for a grid-based virtual board game.

Right now we've not got much more than a handful of teaser screenshots and the basic feature list, all of which you can see on the official site for the game. Cyanide and Focus Interactive plan on revealing more details later this month. We'll keep you posted as and when we find out more.