Star Trek Online artist voyages to iOS with Empire of the Eclipse
When Lee Dotson left his job as lead artist on Star Trek Online to form his own development studio, ZarkSoft Games, he clearly didn't leave behind a thing for interstellar combat. Empire of the Eclipse for iOS, the indie's first title, draws its inspiration from the classic 4X strategy game Master of Orion, Dotson says, as well as the Civilization series.
ZarkSoft has "worked diligently to make a game that lives up to the standards set by those milestone titles," according to Dotson, and has built an engine that supports up to 1500 players per game instance across 90,000 sectors of space. In announcing the game, the developer stressed that Empire of the Eclipse won't include microtransactions of any sort, in order to preserve a "fair and competitive play experience for all."
There's no hard date or pricing yet -- just a promised release window of Q1 2011 for the title.
