Tactics Forge Lite - Free Turn-Based Tactics for Unity

A free, working turn-based tactics core. Tactics Forge Lite gives you the engine behind a hex or grid tactics game: board, movement, turns, abilities, statuses, a combat forecast that explains every number and a simple AI - with a playable demo, Border Skirmish.

• Hex (pointy / flat) and square grids, any map shape, terrain move costs, A* paths and reachable ranges with cost preview.
• Side phases (Fire Emblem / Advance Wars style): each unit moves and acts once.
• Abilities as ScriptableObjects with ranges, shapes and costs; effects: damage, heal, status, cleanse, revive.
• Statuses with stacking rules (poison and stun in the demo).
• Combat forecast with an explained hit chance and damage; highlights, HUD, tooltips, combat log.
• Simple AI (nearest and weakest target, uses all abilities).
• Editor: map painter, inspectors, validator.
• Mouse, keyboard, gamepad and touch; Input System and Input Manager.

Lite and full Tactics Forge

• Lite: everything above and the Border Skirmish demo.
• Full Tactics Forge adds: 6 Ruleset Presets (XCOM, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Into the Breach, Battle Brothers, FFT), initiative and charge-time turns, overwatch, opportunity attacks and counters, advanced effects (push, teleport, summon, terrain change), undo, mid-battle saves, replays and hot-seat, fog of war, capture and production, utility AI with 6 personalities and telegraph mode, AI Inspector, Battle Simulator, 3 demos and 86 unit tests.

Upgrading: import the full kit over Lite - same paths and GUIDs, nothing to delete. Find it here: Tactics Forge on itch.io.

Technical details

• Pure C# rules core + Unity layer (board, highlights, units, sequencer, HUD, camera, input)
• Hex and square grids; terrain costs; ranges and paths
• Abilities and statuses as ScriptableObjects; forecast with Explain breakdown
• Simple AI; map painter, inspectors and validator
• Demo scene Border Skirmish (pixel art drawn by our code)
• Unity 6000.0+; Built-in, URP, HDRP; Input System and Input Manager; no dependencies
• PDF guide with a Lite vs Full table

AI disclosure: The C# code and documentation were written with the help of an AI assistant (Claude by Anthropic) and reviewed by us; the demo was played in Unity 6.6. All pixel art was drawn by our own code; no AI image generators were used.