Most tank games give you a bigger gun. TankRat would rather you borrow someone else’s. In a new 15-minute gameplay segment released on 12 November, developer Alpha Channel and publisher Kepler Interactive showed an unseen mission called Ironstrike, a mechanic that lets you hijack enemy tanks and turn them on their own side, and a boss built out of the scenery. The game launches on 15 January 2027 for PS5 and PC.
It’s the longest look yet at the game since its release date was announced at gamescom Opening Night Live in August, and with Kepler’s name on the box, it’s worth paying attention to.
What TankRat is
TankRat is a single-player action adventure set in a post-apocalyptic region called the ECA. You play as Whittaker, a Sleepwalker: a human consciousness that has been digitised and can fuse with a tank you build and customise from salvaged parts. Alpha Channel calls its earlier TankHead the game’s predecessor, and the Ironstrike mission is new material that wasn’t part of it.
Creative director Daniel Ebanks has described the game as a tribute to kitbashing, the hobbyist habit of building models from parts of other kits, and to 20th-century science fiction. That explains the look: tanks that feel assembled rather than manufactured, roaming a world that owes more to old pulp covers than to modern military shooters.
Ironstrike and the search for Persona Zero
The new footage follows Whittaker into the wreckage of Ironstrike, a city that collapsed long before he arrived. He’s acting on a tip from his mysterious guide, Cyril, and looking for his “Persona Zero”, the original copy of the person he was before he became digital. Along the way, the mission fills in some of the history of the city’s fall, according to Kepler’s breakdown.
It also introduces Willow, one of TankRat’s new characters. She’s an old friend of Cyril’s and one of the first residents of Highpoint to upload her consciousness through a process called Teleprojection, and she has been left alone in the ECA long enough for her sanity to fray. Kepler says she tells Whittaker more about his future than he might want to hear, which is a nicely ominous hook for a game about what’s left of a person once they’ve been copied.
The Remote Viewer changes the fight
The headline mechanic is the Remote Viewer. It lets you temporarily take control of an enemy unit and use its weapons against its allies, tearing apart the group from the inside.
That’s a smart addition to a genre that often comes down to armour versus damage. If it works as described, a fight against a pack of tanks becomes a puzzle about which one to steal and when, closer to the hacking in Watch Dogs or the possession tricks in older immersive sims than to a straight vehicle shooter. How long control lasts and what it costs aren’t explained in the publisher’s description, so the balance is the big unknown until launch.
The Cableworm boss
Ironstrike ends with the Cableworm, a mechanical creature fused out of the landscape around the city, which rips metal out of the ground and animates it. Its main attack is a nine-pronged laser, and Kepler says you’ll need a tank that’s either quick enough to dodge it or tough enough to absorb the hit. Meanwhile, smaller TankRats called Grabbers try to swamp your tank with radiation.
That dodge-or-tank choice is the most interesting line in the release. It suggests your build decisions matter in boss fights, which is exactly what a customisation-heavy game needs to deliver.
Release date, platforms and why Kepler matters
| Detail | Confirmed |
|---|---|
| Release date | 15 January 2027 |
| Platforms | PlayStation 5 and PC (Steam, with Epic Games Store also reported) |
| Developer | Alpha Channel |
| Publisher | Kepler Interactive |
| Players | Single-player |
Alpha Channel was founded in 2018 by former AAA developers and is part of the Kepler Interactive group. Kepler’s recent record is the reason this one is on our radar: its catalogue includes Sifu, Pacific Drive and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a list built on distinctive games rather than safe ones.
Mid-January is also a smart place to land. The post-Christmas window is usually quieter, and a confident, strange action game has a better chance of being noticed there than in the shadow of the year’s blockbusters. You can wishlist it now on Steam. If you like your post-apocalypse with personality, it’s one to watch, and the full Ironstrike segment above is the best way to decide whether it’s for you.