Star Wars Zero Company Preview: XCOM's DNA Meets the Clone Wars

Two weeks before its August 27 release, Star Wars Zero Company has emerged from preview coverage as one of the most anticipated tactics games in years — and one that has been a long time coming for fans of turn-based strategy.

The studio behind it, Bit Reactor, was founded by Greg Foertsch, who spent 22 years at Firaxis Games as art director on XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, and multiple Civilization titles. The game has extra support from Respawn Entertainment, the team behind the Star Wars Jedi series. The pedigree is genuine, and the preview coverage from August 11 suggests it shows on screen.

The game is a single-player, turn-based tactical RPG set during the Clone Wars. Players lead a unit called Zero Company through covert missions as a customizable character named Hawks. The loop borrows directly from XCOM — mission planning, squad management, cover-based positioning, and the permanent loss of soldiers who fall in the field — and transplants it into a Star Wars universe that actually gives the format something to work with. The Clone Wars era provides a built-in ethical complexity (the nature of clone soldiers, the moral ambiguity of the conflict) that tactical games rarely get to inhabit this directly.

Reviewers who played early builds called it "polished, charming and fun" — exactly the right description for a tactics game that needs to be mechanically honest and also actually enjoyable. The concern in this genre is always whether the AI poses a genuine tactical challenge and whether mission variety holds up; early reports suggest both boxes are checked.

Star Wars Zero Company launches on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on August 27, 2026, at 3:00 PM UTC. The preload is already live on Steam and the PlayStation Store.