Gorky 17

Gorky 17 is a 1999 tactical role-playing game from the Polish studio Metropolis Software, released in North America as Odium. A small NATO team is sent to a town near Lubin, where a former Soviet military base has produced hybrid creatures, and where an earlier team has disappeared.

Exploration is in real time and pointed and clicked. When monsters appear, the game switches to turn-based combat on a grid, with the team and the creatures taking turns. Weapons and ammunition are scarce.

It is one of the few games of its time to mix survival horror with turn-based squad combat, and its mood is strong: a ruined town, a cold war secret, and monsters made from people and animals. It was warmly received in Europe.

Its combat is simple and its story linear, and it did little in North America. Its sequel, Gorky Zero, was an action game.

Gorky 17 shares Fallout Tactics' squad in turns against monsters made by the military, in a world where something went badly wrong. It is smaller and more horror than war, and a good example of the Eastern European tactics games of its time.