Star Wars Zero Company arrived this week as a single-player turn-based tactics campaign set in the twilight of the Clone Wars, and Bit Reactor is already looking past launch day. The XCOM-inspired title has opened to some of the strongest critical scores the Star Wars games catalog has seen in years, placing it among a short list of franchise highs on Metacritic.
Speaking with VGC on release day, creative director Greg Foerstch described the reception as a “surreal” moment four years after leaving Firaxis to found Bit Reactor, and he noted that Lucasfilm and Electronic Arts have sent him “a lot” of positive messages. He also made clear that the studio plans to pursue another licensed project rather than building an original universe from scratch.
Asked what might come next, Foerstch pointed to the studio’s comfort with established worlds and added that “we’d love to keep making Star Wars, potentially. I think the next game we’re doing is probably going to be an existing IP,” leaving the door open without locking Bit Reactor into a sequel announcement. He framed that stance around how the team found Star Wars while searching for a license in the first place, treating curation of a known setting as less risky than inventing one.
That mix of enthusiasm and caution reads like a studio protecting its first shipping title while still advertising how well the partnership with Lucasfilm has gone. Foerstch’s comments stop short of promising Star Wars Zero Company 2, yet they underline that Bit Reactor would rather stay inside a known galaxy than spend its next cycle inventing names, lore, and marketing from nothing.
He also tied the next-project talk to how the team has always approached games such as Civilization, XCOM, and Pirates, treating those productions as existing properties the developers were responsible for curating. Working with Lucasfilm, he added, has been an absolute joy, which helps explain why another licensed assignment sits at the top of the studio’s list.
Press coverage has been unusually kind for a new Star Wars tactics game. At the time of the VGC conversation, Star Wars Zero Company sat at 86 on Metacritic, a mark that puts it above or level with most modern entries and behind only a handful of early-2000s classics such as Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Foerstch said the reviews validate an aim that went beyond winning a genre award and toward building a game of the year candidate. Customization drew particular praise in that coverage, giving players wide control over operators, loadouts, and presentation inside the Clone Wars-era story.
He did acknowledge launch complaints about technical issues, especially on PC, where hardware setups vary more than they do on consoles. Bit Reactor, he explained, treats those reports as problems to correct as quickly as possible rather than as notes to file away for a later project.
The studio is still young even if many of its leads have shipped multiple tactics games together, and Foerstch described the current industry climate as one in which partners wait to see whether a new team can actually deliver. For now the focus remains on supporting Star Wars Zero Company and lining up whatever licensed work comes after it.
Star Wars Zero Company is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC through Steam, the EA App, and the Epic Games Store.
