I have a soft spot for Sami Laakso’s Daimyria, the shared setting for Dale of Merchants, Lands of Galzyr, and Peacemakers. It’s the specificity that does it. Other games about anthropomorphic animals feature, I dunno, turtles. Daimyria doesn’t settle for such broadness. Instead, it’s populated with fennec foxes and short-beaked echidnas and giant pangolins. Each species is an entire identity unto itself. Medieval courtiers in fursuits need not apply.

The forthcoming Peacemakers: Horrors of War is a reimagining of Laakso’s Dawn of Peacemakers. The early version of the game only includes two scenarios, but those were enough to get me excited for more.

I would stop this war, but it’s so darn huggable.

As you might have guessed from the title, Peacemakers: Horrors of War is one of those rare games that’s not about winning a war. Strictly speaking, you aren’t even a participant. Two sides have marched to battle, spears sharpened, arrows nocked, atrocities waiting in the wings. That’s where you step in. You’re a peacemaker, a cross between a blue helmet and a saboteur. Neither belligerent is going to harm you, leaving you free to move between opposing camps, spying on orders and sowing just enough chaos to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

What follows feels, above all else, like a puzzle game. Both of the scenarios I played began thick with the fog of war. Each army has its orders, dense stacks of cards that combine to create a dynamic and ever-changing order of battle. One turn might see the scarlet macaws preparing an assault on the ocelots across the river, while on the next they’ll dodge into cover. These orders don’t exist in isolation; they’re attended by modifier cards that add shape and dimension to the proceedings. That assault, for example, might be connected to the “Impatient” modifier. This could prove dangerous, since Impatient lets an attack order stick around. Taking cover, meanwhile, might be connected to “Revoked,” meaning the macaws won’t take cover at all. In fact, a revoked order sees their will to battle declining a bit.

So we’re looking at a situation. The macaws intend to attack, and maybe attack again, but once exposed their order to take cover will be revoked. This spells trouble. They’re going to ford the river, deal some grievous injuries to the ocelots, and then fail to defend themselves from any counterattack. Over the next turn or two, we’re going to see casualties.

Each side has their orders — and you have ways to alter them.

That’s where the peacemakers come in. This back and forth between armies provides the backdrop to our own activities. By spending our own cards, we can infiltrate the warring clans, survey their orders, and then manipulate the outcome. In the above situation, we might swap those modifiers. Now the order to attack will be revoked, seriously bumming out the bloodthirsty macaws, followed by a successful cover that nevertheless pairs poorly with the their impatience. Over the next two turns, they’re now losing two points to their overall morale. Since our goal is to demoralize both sides until they’re willing to set aside their differences, that puts us on the right track.

To be clear, this isn’t a simple task. For one thing, we’re only looking at half of the round’s orders. It’s entirely possible that we’ll need to intervene with the ocelots as well. I’m also presupposing that we actually know what the macaws are up to, which involves moving into position, surveying their orders, and still having action cards left over to tinker with the outcome. To wield such insights into the workings of an army on the field, we might need to get creative, bouncing cards between characters and making tactical concessions.

“Tactical concessions.” What a euphemism. As horrible as it is to say, we might want some of those invading macaws to get thrashed crossing the river, because nothing craters morale quite like hearing that an entire cohort has been wiped off the map. But a unit’s death is never something you permit lightly. Peacemakers makes it clear that these are atrocities, forcing you to draw a “horror” every time a unit is totally destroyed. These traumatize your heroes, sometimes by making them unwelcome in an army that now regards them as a spy, other times by inflicting panic attacks or deep-seated anxieties. Peacemakers is an uncommonly honest game in this regard, demonstrating the toll of violence on belligerents and noncombatants alike.

Food poisoning: stopping war via dysentery since olden times.

Still, every now and then the easiest way forward is to permit something awful. In the game’s second scenario, it’s the scarlet macaws who are put on the back foot. Their city is under siege, and they’re seriously outnumbered by invading spectacled bears and outgunned by tuatara pirates. Those latter invaders are especially dangerous, firing on the city from afar with their ship’s cannons. But if a cannonade happens to strike their allies, the war might end sooner. Lives could be saved. This is especially tempting because the invaders have much higher morale than the macaws. Every little bit helps. In our play, the macaws were one point away from surrender — which, one presumes, would result in even greater atrocities as the invaders are given free reign over the defeated.

So we tricked the bears into marching into the path of a bombardment. Some of them were eliminated. Both sides were humbled. Peace was struck. And for our efforts, my red panda drew a horror card that claimed he was tormented by that sacrifice. In Peacemakers, horrors can be dealt with. They can be discarded if the right conditions are met. I like to think that’s a concession to playability. Some part of me hopes that my red panda carried his torment long after the battlefield returned to its original uses.

This past month’s release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has us once again discussing the moral calculus of war. Peacemakers isn’t nearly as fraught as the debate over whether weapons that could obliterate all human life should be detonated or stockpiled, but I do find it ironic that Sami Laakso’s game about warring animals has more to contribute to the discussion of “acceptable war casualties” than nearly any wargame. In that genre, an acceptable war casualty is pretty much always any casualty that doesn’t impede your ability to continue to make war. Lives are a resource to be spent, not bodies that, once spent, will keep you awake at night.

Peacemakers doesn’t agree. Here, the only acceptable war casualty, if there is such a thing, is that which preserves. There are still horrors far below the resolution of the game’s depiction. As far as I’ve seen, there’s no such thing as a civilian casualty. Maybe that’s a relief, maybe it’s a crucial omission; I’m not sure either way. But Peacemakers joins the corpus of fiction that allows us to consider dangerous topics with the ease of a tongue probing a canker sore. In the feuds of its anthropomorphic animals, we see the moral calculus of war put on unrelenting display. Every turn offers another Sophie’s choice between one horror and another. Yet it never feels heavy or preachy, only aware that war begins as a failure and tends to get worse, only willing to offer an alternative to the pursuit of victory at all costs. It’s a game of moral clarity, but never moral certitude.

This lizard can’t fire cannons while injured. Except I want its cannons firing. A real pickle.

I’m gripped. Both by the game’s puzzle, which is considerable, and by its willingness to excavate the moral quandaries that lie thick on the grounds of military combat but so often go missing from games about warfare. What a thrilling exemplar of a genre all of its own. I’ve only seen the first two of its conflicts. I can’t wait to see the remaining four.

Peacemakers: Horrors of War will be on Gamefound next week.

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A prototype copy was temporarily provided.