Tank Squad

A launch overshadowed by a publisher collapse

Tank Squad, released 8 May 2025, is the work of DeGenerals S.A., a small Polish studio, and its launch is inseparable from a story reviewers repeatedly reference in surprising, specific detail. One of the most upvoted reviews in the entire sample opens by framing the game as "a story about how not to release a game," describing a publisher, PlayWay, ending its funding relationship with the small team essentially overnight, and reportedly demanding repayment of prior funding rather than continuing to support the project through its rough launch window. That reviewer describes buying the game at release in early May, refunding it within 45 minutes, "as did many others," a detail that helps explain the sharp split in the review sample between an initial wave of frustrated launch-day refunds and a later, more forgiving cohort of reviewers giving the team credit for what came after.

What makes Tank Squad worth covering despite that rocky start is a concept genuinely distinctive within its genre. Rather than controlling a tank as a single unit the way most WWII tank games do, Tank Squad models each vehicle as a coordinated crew: commander, gunner, loader, driver, and machine gunner, each with their own discrete responsibilities, playable solo with AI crewmates or with up to three friends filling the remaining roles in online co-op. One detailed review describes this as "a simulation-first design that rewards procedural discipline, communication, and tactical awareness," positioning the game somewhere between hardcore military simulation and more accessible co-op action, but leaning decisively toward the former.

A small team's visible fight to fix what shipped broken

A recurring, striking pattern across the review sample is reviewers explicitly acknowledging the game launched in a rough, arguably unfinished state, while still recommending it based on the pace and sincerity of post-launch support. One reviewer states this almost as a checklist: "Game probably should have been listed as 'early access' due to the unfinished state and bugs," followed immediately by "Devs appear to be working very hard to fix the game issues and add more content," concluding the game is a "diamond in the rough" worth supporting now specifically so it can become what it is capable of becoming. Another reviewer who returned to write a follow-up review three weeks and twenty additional hours after their initial impressions confirms that pattern held up in practice, noting that after one major update, "every major issue I noticed while playing the first time... was at least approached," while still flagging concerns about the studio's public roadmap and long-term scope.

That goodwill extends specifically to the game's mechanical ambitions. Reviewers praise the depth of tank customisation, covering camouflage, decals, and various attachments across a roster including the Panzer I through VI and a small Soviet-side campaign, and multiple reviewers confirm the co-op experience functions well in practice, with one describing "just finished an online session where" the multiplayer performed as intended despite acknowledging real rough edges elsewhere. Notably, several of the most detailed, most upvoted reviews are not simple thumbs-up endorsements but careful, qualified recommendations explicitly written to steer other players toward patience rather than immediate high expectations, a tone the review sample maintains with unusual consistency.

Bugs, broken AI, and a cluttered interface

Set against that goodwill is an equally consistent, and in places more severe, set of technical complaints that cannot be waved away as simple launch jitters. AI behaviour draws the most specific, repeated criticism, with one reviewer cataloguing asymmetric accuracy issues where "enemy tank can shoot with accuracy on the move but it is impossible for our side," alongside spawned friendly squads that get "stuck or do nothing too often." Another reviewer independently confirms the same pattern from the opposite angle, reporting enemies that either "just sit in one place" or "rush forward mindlessly," concluding the resulting combat feels "chaotic but not in a natural, fun or realistic way."

The user interface draws similarly pointed criticism, with one reviewer describing it as feeling "like 2/3 different interfaces overlapping," a complaint echoed by others describing menus nested inside menus that take real time and patience to learn. Performance and polish complaints compound the picture: one particularly harsh, detailed review compares the technical execution to "some student's very first Unity project, complete with graphical issues, weird stuttery motion, commands that doesn't register at times," while a separate reviewer reports refunding after encountering "floating tanks and disappearing terrain" alongside frequent frame-rate drops. Taken together, these complaints paint a picture consistent with the game having launched before it was technically ready, regardless of how sympathetic reviewers are to the circumstances that may have forced that timing.

Verdict

Tank Squad sits in an unusually specific, sympathetic category of rough launch: a genuinely distinctive concept, executed by a small, evidently earnest team, released into a broken state seemingly forced by circumstances outside the developers' full control, and followed by real, visible effort to fix what shipped wrong. That context matters, and reviewers clearly factor it into their scores far more generously than they would for a similarly buggy release from a larger, better-resourced studio. But context cannot fully offset the substance of the complaints themselves: AI that behaves inconsistently and often nonsensically, an interface reviewers describe in genuinely alarming terms, and performance issues serious enough to have driven a meaningful share of buyers to refund within their first hour. Players specifically drawn to the crew-role concept, and willing to treat this purchase as support for a small studio's ongoing recovery rather than a bet on a finished product, will likely find real value here, particularly in co-op with friends. Everyone else should wait for the fixes the developers are visibly, actively working toward before committing money to what is, right now, still a genuinely unfinished game.