By Chris Picone, 13 October, 2025

Dying Breed is a quirky RTS, homage to seemingly all the golden RTS games from the 90s. The similarities to C&C are immediate and obvious but the further in you get, the more you realise the other greats get a nod too. Part parody, part fast-paced strategy game, it's a fun game and that's all it tries to be. 

Aesthetics

At first glance you could be forgiven for mistaking Dying Breed as a C&C clone - which it is, kind of.  The first few units (infantry, dogs, bikes, quads, tanks, chinooks, hovercraft, commando, engineers) are practically identical.  The art style in general; the terrain, buildings, interface, the fonts... Other than a few mod-cons like changeable colour on the interface and an extensive zoom feature, it all could have been ripped from the original C&C.  Then there's the NOD - sorry, EAD - which features the familiar red triangle, except with an erupting sandworm instead of a scorpion tail. Unmistakeable. While this could have angled the game as a cheap rip-off, it all ties in well with the FMV & 3D video sequences - again, heavily "inspired" by C&C, well-delivered but with deliberately low budget and obviously taking the piss.  No, we're firmly in parody territory here, and it's delightful. 

Gameplay

There are two faction campaigns, and they're surprisingly different from one another.  I started with the EAD campaign (the baddies), and it starts the most "normal." Build your base, harvest your tiberium Substance D, build a small army, and then wipe out... either the enemy or the civilians? Either will win you the level but your choices in the game change the story and the levels you play on the way through. I only played a few levels of EAD because the game's still a bit buggy at the moment (keep in mind it's freshly released in Early Access!) but after checking out the manual it looks like the EAD eventually stray from their NOD roots and push toward KKND weirdness, with a slew of cool zombies and mutants to control. Giant octopus, waterworms, brain spiders, giant mantis, it looks like it's gonna get awesome.  HOMM3 & Dune get a nod too - the Substance D is populated with roving sandworms and some levels have an "underground map."  The WWA campaign, on the other hand, starts with a bunch of stealthy spy & commando missions. I think I'm maybe halfway through the game in its current state, and there's already been a good variety of missions including base defence, skirmish, and rescue. The game's actual mechanics are different to many RTS games though.  Battles are fast and brutal - everything dies really quickly, and explosions are particularly dangerous. You really need to manage your troops to ensure they aren't clumped together, your heavy weapons are in place before battles start, and you really need to try to get the first shot in. Positioning the right weapons against the right enemies is crucial. Dying Breed doesn't lend itself to the usual RTS "death ball" tactics, which is refreshing. You will need to attack in waves, while defending yourself, and often fighting battles on more than one front with skirmish groups and patrols. Right now some of the movement is a bit clunky (turning can be very painful), pathfinding is terrible and the AI isn't amazing, but I've definitely seen worse and the developers have noted that these are all things they're actively working on fixing. 

Verdict

 Although Dying Breed is still rather unbalanced and buggy, and has a long development road ahead of it (they plan to stay in EA for ~12 months), it already has a lot to offer. The story's interested, the FMVs are fun, the battles are intense, the levels are engaging, there's solid variety...  the finished product should be brilliant.

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088550/Dying_Breed/