A new BattleTech mod out this week condenses the mech strategy game's lengthy campaign down to a bite-size maximum of eight hours by giving you a 120-day time limit to build up your fleet and reach the campaign finale. If you die in the process, that's it: game over.

It's inspired by FTL, which means the star map that you play on will be randomised each time, and will be a lot smaller than the base game's map. The idea of fighting through seven hours only to fail at the last sounds daunting, so it's not for the faint-hearted, especially as every faction in the game will dislike you from the start.

A revamped XP system will encourage you to specialise your mechs more than you normally would, so expect to make tough choices about what equipment to bolt onto each one.

To help speed up progress, you'll get more salvage at the end of missions, and you're more likely to find rare weapons. You'll also start with the Argo, a ship you only usually unlock later in the campaign.

Modder Delta Angelfire plans to add a barebones story, randomised final encounters and tweaked skill trees in the future.

If you fancy it, here's the Nexus page, where you'll find full installation instructions.