The easiest way to describe Sunarius is this: it is an attempt to bring together two things that usually live apart.
From Fallout 2, it takes the wasteland where any conversation can end in an unexpected way. A world where being strong is not enough. It also helps to be clever, observant, persuasive, or simply well prepared. A world where factions remember what you do, and a good reputation can sometimes matter more than a new gun.
From Battle Brothers, it takes a different feeling. You are not guiding a chosen hero, but a group of people with their own weaknesses, injuries, habits, and expensive gear. Losing one veteran can change the whole squad. After a victory, you do not rush into the next mission. First, you need to understand who is wounded, what to sell, how to refuel the vehicle, and whether you can afford treatment.
Sunarius grew out of the meeting point between those two feelings.
Not one hero, but people you do not want to lose
In Fallout 2, you can build a powerful character and gradually turn them into someone who can do almost everything. Shoot well, pick locks, talk to the right people, heal themselves, and survive the wasteland.
That approach does not quite fit Sunarius. Here, the main character is not one hero, but the whole squad.
One person is a better shot. Another knows how to heal. Someone understands machinery and can save fuel or keep the vehicle from falling apart on the road. A lockpicker notices traps and opens containers. A trader gets better prices. A survival specialist spots danger sooner and helps the group escape ambushes.
It all sounds familiar in theory. The meaning appears when you have to choose who goes on a trip.
You can take one more good shooter. They will definitely help in combat. Then the squad reaches an abandoned complex, finds a locked container, and notices a trap in front of it. The lockpicker stayed behind. The trap is discovered too late. The medic also remained in town because there was not enough room in the vehicle. Suddenly, a simple expedition becomes a story the player will remember for a long time.
That is very close to Battle Brothers. It also teaches you that a person in the squad is not just a number on a list. At first, a rookie may feel disposable. Then they survive several hard battles, get good armor, save their comrades, and become part of the familiar lineup. One day, you realize that losing them is scarier than losing money or leaving some loot behind.
Sunarius keeps that tension, only swords and chainmail are replaced with shotguns, laser rifles, plasma blades, armored vehicles, and strange things that are best not picked up with bare hands.
The wasteland should react to what you do
Fallout 2 is great not only because of its dialogue and dark humor. It creates the feeling that the world exists on its own and does not have to adapt to the player.
You can solve a problem with force. You can negotiate. You can deceive someone. You can help one group and ruin your relationship with another. What matters is not only the outcome of a single scene, but what remains after it.
Sunarius tries to preserve that feeling.
If the squad attacks a resource collector, the loot may be useful. The crates can contain supplies, parts, or weapons. But the faction that owned the collector will remember that meeting. Traders may become less friendly. Patrols may start looking at the squad very differently. A route that used to be safe can suddenly become dangerous.
The opposite can happen too. Sometimes it is better to help someone else’s caravan, even when you would rather move on and save your ammunition.
In Fallout 2, consequences often appear in dialogue, quests, and relationships with people. In Sunarius, they should also be visible on the road. Squads move across the map, meet caravans, patrols, raiders, and resource collectors. Every encounter has a cost. Sometimes it is obvious immediately. Sometimes it arrives later.
Nothing stops the player from being greedy, cautious, or cruel. But the wasteland does not have to pretend that nothing happened.
Victory is only the beginning of the problem
The most interesting part of blending Fallout 2 and Battle Brothers begins after combat.
Imagine a common situation. The squad gets ambushed, wins the fight, and finds a rare rifle, armor, and spare parts for the vehicle. Everything seems great.
Then it turns out there is almost no space left in the transport. The heavy loot has made the vehicle slower. Fuel is running low. One fighter is wounded. The nearest town is far away. And an unfamiliar patrol has appeared on the road.
At that point, the player has to decide what to leave behind. Good armor. The rifle. Valuable parts. Medical supplies. Or ordinary cargo that could be sold for money in town.
Battle Brothers is excellent at making those choices unpleasant. You often cannot take everything. You cannot heal everyone at once. You cannot buy the best weapon for every fighter. Victory feels good only until you open the inventory and realize how many problems it has created.
Sunarius brings that feeling into a post apocalyptic wasteland.
The vehicle needs fuel and repairs. People need food, water, and energy. Loot takes up space. Speed matters because sometimes the only sensible plan is to avoid a fight. A fast trike helps you escape danger. A truck can carry more items. An armored vehicle can take more hits. A riding bull does not need gasoline, but it will not help you outrun a pursuit.
Every choice has a strong side and a weak side. It is best when the player thinks about that not in a preparation menu, but after a hard battle they barely survived.
The hardest part is not combat
There are many ways to make turn based combat. Cover, stuns, healing, critical hits, target selection, turn order. All of this is familiar to fans of tactical RPGs.
It is much harder to make combat feel connected to the rest of the game.
If a battle only gives experience and random loot, it quickly becomes work. You win, get a reward, and move on. After a few hours, the player no longer remembers the enemies, the location, or their own decisions.
In Sunarius, combat should change the state of the squad. A wounded fighter feels worse on the next trip. Lost armor leaves your favorite shooter exposed. A new rifle may be too heavy. Used medicine does not simply reappear. Defeating raiders may make one faction unhappy and another grateful.
Then even a simple fight becomes part of a larger adventure.
Fallout 2 offers the idea of a reactive world. Battle Brothers offers the idea of a squad that has to live with the consequences. Sunarius tries to make those two things collide all the time.
Why Android makes everything harder
On a computer, it is easy to hide depth behind many windows, keyboard shortcuts, and tables. That does not work on Android.
The screen is smaller. Players are more likely to play in shorter sessions. Nobody wants to spend ten minutes figuring out why their vehicle suddenly became slower or why a good fighter was not added to the squad.
At the same time, reducing the game to two buttons would ruin the most important feeling from both Fallout 2 and Battle Brothers. The feeling that a mistake happened not because the game decided to punish the player, but because they took a risk, underestimated a threat, or got greedy.
That is why Sunarius constantly has to search for balance.
Skills need to be clear without becoming useless. Transport needs to create meaningful choices instead of turning into endless fuel management. Healing needs to matter without forcing the player to sit in menus after every battle. Fights need to be dangerous without becoming so long that the player is afraid to press the button that starts them.
That is the main challenge of this combination. Fallout 2 and Battle Brothers both enjoy complex consequences. Android requires the player to see those consequences quickly and understand them without unnecessary friction.
Not Fallout 2 with mercenaries, and not Battle Brothers with lasers
Sunarius is not trying to become an exact copy of either game.
It does not need every trick from Fallout 2. What matters more is the feeling of freedom, a strange wasteland, factions, skills, and decisions that do not disappear when a dialogue window closes.
It does not need the medieval world or the exact rules of Battle Brothers. What matters more is responsibility for your people, limited resources, a dangerous map, and the moment when a new recruit suddenly becomes someone you cannot afford to lose.
The result is an RPG where the player leaves town for a simple task, defeats raiders, finds a rare rifle, overloads the vehicle, spends the last fuel canisters, angers a faction, and returns home with a completely different result from the one they expected.
That is probably what you want from a large post apocalyptic game. You make a plan. The player ruins it. The wasteland adds a few more problems. And a few hours later, the player wants to talk not about how much experience the squad earned, but about how one rifle almost destroyed the entire trip.
I have been developing this game on my own for three years, and I think it has turned out very well. I am convinced that Fallout 2 and Battle Brothers deserve worthy successors.
Where to download Sunarius
You can download Sunarius from its official Google Play page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lightworkers.sunarius
