The Troma Project

I've spent time around enough obscure turn-based tactics games to know when something was buried on purpose, and The Troma Project carries every tell of a title that narrowly missed the recycle bin. Developed by Polish studio Nekrosoft and completed in 2001 before being shelved for over a decade, this is a game that arrived on Steam in 2015 essentially unmodified - engine, interface, AI quirks and all. Community reviewers have noted it shares its bones with an earlier Nekrosoft title called Rezerwowe Psy, with a significant portion of the original mechanics reportedly stripped out in the conversion. If you come in expecting a tight tactical sandbox, you will leave disappointed. So what does it actually play like? Think of a very low-budget, grid-adjacent take on the early Fallout or POSTAL turn-based format: you drop into a map, locate enemies marked on a minimap, and eliminate them across seven chapters that shuttle you from Tromaville to Arabia to Motumbuland. Playable characters include Toxic Avenger, Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, and a third figure called The Stranger. The item system is surprisingly wide on paper - hundreds of weapons, drug items, and gadgets - and there is an inventory layer where you can combine items and take targeted shots at specific body zones or blow up vehicles. On the surface that sounds richer than it is; in practice the AI does little to pressure you, and between-mission healing apparently did not survive the port intact, which flattens any sense of resource management across chapters. From a strategy depth standpoint, this is not a game you buy to exercise your decision-making muscle. The turn structure is simple, the AI is passive by modern standards, there is no mod ecosystem, and the tutorial is either nonexistent or absorbed into Lloyd Kaufman's pre-mission narration - which is itself a genuine selling point if you are a Troma fan. Kaufman voices mission briefings, full-screen FMV clips from Troma films interrupt the campaign at intervals, and the 25-plus track soundtrack pulls from metal acts like Nevermore and punk outfits like The Loose Nuts. That layer of licensed Troma DNA is the only thing that genuinely distinguishes this from hundreds of forgotten early-2000s Eastern European freeware tactics games. The honest case for buying it is narrow but real: you are a Troma completionist, you have affection for the low-budget Z-movie aesthetic that Troma Entertainment built its identity on, and you accept that the gameplay exists mostly as a delivery vehicle for schlocky cutscenes and Kaufman audio. Steam user sentiment sits around 79 percent positive from a small review pool, which suggests a core of forgiving fans rather than broad tactical appeal. There is zero tutorial respect for newcomers in the strategic sense - no difficulty curve, no build progression, no late-game complexity that rewards study. What you get is roughly what a mid-2000s licensed tie-in would have shipped as, without the polish that a bigger budget might have forced.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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