With the launch of 63 Days, Destructive Creations takes another step away from its past in an effort to cement itself as a major player in the Real-Time Tactic genre.
Singleplayer.
Co-op Multiplayer.
63 Days is a very nice-looking Desperados-like game that benefits from War Mongrels’s disastrous launch and later recovery. As a result, unlike its predecessor, it is mechanically sound and content-rich at launch.
However, only one mechanic truly sets it apart from other games in the Real Time Tactics genre: the ability to take direct control over your squad and engage in isometric action combat.
While I love Real-Time Tactics games and sneaking around as much as anyone else, taking direct control over a character or group of characters and engaging in direct combat with the enemy feels fantastic and reminds me of one of my favourite games of all time, Army Men: Toys in Space, which, in my opinion, is an underrated classic of the real-time tactics genre and one of the best games in the Army Man franchise.
I would love to see other games in the genre adopt a similar mechanic going forward.
While it will never replace the traditional stealth-based Real-Time Tactic mechanics, having the option to “Go Rambo” is certainly one way to bypass a tricky mission, even if a slow and steady approach would have been the better route.
I must preface this by saying I am not the biggest fan of 63 Days‘s developer, Destructive Creations.
I have found them to be needlessly edgy in the past, and their game Hatred is the perfect example of a game that predominantly appeals to spiritually sick people and should never have been considered, let alone ever made.
However, in recent years, they have started to “grow up” and appear to finally understand that a PEGI 18 title doesn’t have to be focused on slaughtering innocent civilians for fun.
While Ancestors Legacy was pretty dark and violent, it was a drastic improvement over Hatred, and War Mongrels was an even greater step towards normalcy.
With the launch of 63 Days, Destructive Creations seems to have finally broken free from their past, as 63 Days is content-wise about what you would expect from a standard PEGI 18 title, with a greater emphasis on narrative quality over shock value, which their earlier games, such as Hatred were known for.
While I feel that Destructive Creations could have less profanity in their scripts, even that is still “within reason” considering 63 Day’s PEGI 18 rating.
I have seen worse profanity in titles by developers with “better reputations”, and while I am not a fan of excessive profanity, like many things in 2024, it’s easy to ignore it and focus on the gameplay, which is exceptionally good.
63 Days looks and plays like a more action-focused Desperados game.
While Mimimi Games is likely to remain the king of the genre in the hearts of many Real Time Tactics fans (despite the developer shuttering in 2023), Destructive Creations has a chance of becoming an equally beloved studio of Real-Time Tactics games if it continues to release high-quality titles such as War Mongrels and 63 Days and, most importantly, if it is willing to make a clean break with some of the most revolting parts of its small but growing community.
Due to the edgy nature of the games Destructive Creations released early in their careers, many of their core followers are alt-right, and by alt-right, I do not mean “slightly racist”, but full-blown Hitler-worshipping white supremacists who spew hatred at the drop of a hat.
Even Destructive Creations themselves have been the target of this vitriol on occasion, such as when they released the Middle Eastern-themed DLC for Ancestors Legacy (Saladin’s Conquest), with some more vocal elements of the alt-right community being incensed that “brown people” were being given a spotlight in a game which they felt promoted Aryan supremacy and heritage.
More recently, we have seen anger that 63 Days doesn’t allow players to play as Nazis hunting down Polish resistance and anger than Nazis being presented in a “dim light”, similar criticism which was levied at War Mongrels by many of the same individuals.
It’s time Destructive Creations shed the last remnants of their questionable reputation by telling such people that they are not welcome nor wanted and that their views and opinions are invalid.
It’s never easy to drive away potential customers. However, Destructive Creations needs to distance itself from the reputation earned by some of its early releases, and cutting all ties with the alt-right is one way to do that.
By making it crystal clear that they do not endorse or support alt-right idealogy, Destructive Creations will further cement itself as a legitimate developer in the eyes of the wider gaming community and hopefully make the Destructive Creations community less toxic in the process.
While 63 Days is an AA title, it has AAA-quality voice acting, which helps to immerse the player in the excellent narrative and adds a sense of gravity and emotion to certain missions and encounters that would otherwise have been less impactful with poor or no voice acting.
While the dialogue could use fewer F words, overall, it is believable, enjoyable, and, most importantly, immersive enough to keep players engaged for its approximately 12-15-hour run time.
Like its predecessor, War Mongrels, 63 Days is one of the only Real-Time Tactics games to feature an online cooperative mode.
Unfortunately, like its predecessor, War Mongrels, 63 Days does not support cross-play or party invites.
As a result, the mode will likely die at launch, just like War Mongrol’s cooperative mode, which rarely saw more than a single active lobby during peak NA/EU playtime and has been dead on all platforms since shortly after its release.
63 Days is a real time tactics video game developed and published by Destructive Creations, it was released on 26 September 2024 and retails for $29.99.
63 Days is available on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
63 Days is rated PEGI 18+ and contains:
I have not always been a fan of Destructive Creations, and I found their earlier works are needlessly offensive. Hatred, in particular, is used as an example in our Game Review Policy as the type of game we would never review due to its near-total lack of artistic merit and emphasis on brutality towards innocents.
However, I can see that Destructive Creations is taking strides towards making games that offer more than violence, and 63 Days is the best game they have made so far.
While some of the game mechanics used in War Mongrels and 63 Days are not as polished or fleshed out as those found in titles such as Desperados 3 and Shadow Tactics, they are very similar quality-wise, and I will be watching their future Real Time Tactic releases with great interest.
