real-time strategy
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Ubisoft's 'The Settlers' reboot finally arrives March 17th
Ubisoft has revealed that its 'The Settlers' revival will launch on PCs March 17th.
Apple Arcade is getting an exclusive Lego Star Wars game
Real-time strategy title 'Lego Star Wars Battles' will arrive on the service soon.
'Command & Conquer Remastered' updates '90s RTS action for 4K monitors
Remastered versions of the first two Command & Conquer games are now available, so you can relive classic 90s RTS action with updated graphics and sound.
'Total War: Shogun 2' is free on Steam until May 1st
One of the best entries in the Total War series is currently free on Steam.
'Command & Conquer' remaster is shaping up to be a huge visual upgrade
Petroglyph, Lemon Sky and EA are finally ready to offer a glimpse at the Command & Conquer remaster, and it's evident the game won't veer far from its roots. A newly-posted first peek at the real-time strategy game shows that it really is just the original 2D title redone with high-resolution artwork. Lemon Sky re-modeled the visuals as closely as possible, and lined it up frame-by-frame with the original. You can even switch between the original and remastered graphics with a key press when you're playing campaign missions -- it's like taking your glasses off for a brief moment.
Warhammer 40K RTS Battlefleet Gothic: Armada announced
Tindalos Interactive is developing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, a real-time strategy adaptation of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K tabletop series. Publisher Focus Home Interactive's announcement explains that Armada will focus on the Imperial Navy's Battlefleet Gothic and its attempts to spare the galaxy from awful things, spread courtesy of the Chaos Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler. Players will command fleets comprised of ships from Imperial, Chaos, Eldar and Ork forces. Leaders can also customize the weaponry, defense and support sub-systems of ships within their fleet, altering their performance and battle-specific special abilities. Experience and promotions will also be awarded to ships as they survive bouts of war. Armada isn't Tindalos Interactive's first crack at the RTS genre; the studio shared a glimpse of its futuristic, fight-over-precious-resources RTS Etherium early last year. We're still waiting to see how that turns out though – Etherium is currently scheduled to launch its assault on PC sometime in 2015. [Image: Focus Home Interactive]
Uber axes Human Resources Kickstarter campaign
Planetary Annihilation developer Uber Entertainment canceled its Kickstarter campaign for Human Resources, the developer's human-harvesting, apocalyptic real-time strategy game. "Every Kickstarter prediction model is showing that we will come up woefully short of our goal," the developer wrote in an update on its funding page, adding that it can't continue spending time and money on a project that won't get funded. "One thing is for sure, Human Resources, as pitched in this Kickstarter, is over. But we adore the world of Human Resources and will endeavor to do what we can to bring it to life in some form." The developer raised $384,358 of its $1.4 million goal on the funding platform. The lofty goal would have been difficult for any aspiring developer to overcome; just four of the 341 Kickstarter games tracked in our one-year Crowdfund Bookie research series earned that much money in their campaigns. Even the $844,127 hauled in by Harmonix for Amplitude in May was an anomaly in a funding space that scarcely supports big-budget projects like it once did. Human Resources was planned to end in two weeks on Tuesday, November 4. [Image: Uber Entertainment]
StarCraft II: An MMO player's perspective
StarCraft is of immense importance to the world of online gaming. It's one of the franchises responsible for establishing Blizzard Entertainment as a titan (get it!?) of the games industry. It serves, for many, as the ideal example of what an RTS game should aspire to be. And it was among the first titles to transcend one-off competitions and contests to become a global e-sport featuring pros who make the big bucks and events watched by millions. Without StarCraft, there would be no Dota 2, no League of Legends, perhaps no SMITE or Infinite Crisis. The MOBA niche, now one of the most profitable areas of online gaming, might not exist if not for the original StarCraft's custom three-lane Aeon of Strife map. StarCraft and its sequel, StarCraft II, represent the quintessential essence of small-scale online warfare. As a fan of MOBAs and an ardent lover of clicking things quickly, I took a spin in StarCraft II in an effort to better understand the foundation of the games I enjoy. What I discovered was a difficult, punishing game that demands your full attention and gives you plenty of reasons to keep coming back.
Bark out orders in There Came an Echo's War Room
Guiding a squad of soldiers through a campaign of missions with just your voice might take some practice, but There Came An Echo's War Room could serve as a pretty serviceable training ground. Whereas Iridium Studios' Jason Wishnov describes Echo's campaign as "narratively complex," War Room will let field commanders get right to the battlefield and experiment with weapons, voice commands and strategies to defeat waves of enemies. If you're of the "I'll believe it when I see it" mindset, Wishnov stated that the trailer's voice commands were "captured live and unedited," but it should be noted that the above demonstration of War Room is pre-alpha footage, and it isn't specified which version of Echo was used for the recording. You'll be able to call the shots when Echo reaches Steam later this year, with PS4, Xbox One, Mac and Linux versions also in the works. [Image: Iridium Studios]
Cannon Brawl opens fire on Mac
Turtle Sandbox Games' Early Access version of Cannon Brawl now allows Mac users to enjoy its competitive blend of Worms-style 2D land domination and real-time strategy elements. Today's added Mac support precedes plans to launch Cannon Brawl's beta tomorrow, as reported by Polygon. Cannon Brawl developer Peter Angstadt told Joystiq the beta is mostly an internal milestone, but its launch does coincide with Cannon Brawl's price rising from $9.99 to $14.99. You're not too late to get a decent deal though – a 40 percent discount from that increase will be offered until June 14, which means you have a week to decide whether to enlist in the action for $8.99. Angstadt explained the increase is due to content added to Cannon Brawl's Early Access version over the past year, with updates including new maps, pilots, building types and the Campaign Nightmare mode. Conquests for land can also transcend operating systems, since cross-platform multiplayer is supported. Cannon Brawl's beta period will last "a month or two," though a release window for a complete base version is still to be announced. [Image: Turtle Sandbox Games]
Sci-fi RTS Salvaged takes two screens to play on PC, tablet
Opposable Games recently showed off Salvaged, a real-time strategy game that requires a bit of multitasking from its players. The tactical sci-fi game is played using two screens, one on any iOS or Android tablet or smartphone (as the controller) and the other being a monitor via PC, Mac or Linux. In Salvaged, players act as one of many operators for a Remote Interstellar Salvage Crew (RISC), boarding wrecked ships to locate loot and retrieve each ship's black box recorders. The touchscreen in players' hands offers a top-down view of the frantic, squad-based action, allowing players to issue commands to their team and assess alien threats as well as interact with the wrecked ships themselves by hacking terminals, downloading data and restoring power and lighting. The second screen on players' PCs shows the operation in real-time through the squad's shoulder-mounted cameras. The UK developer cited classic games like Captive and the 1993 version of Space Hulk as well both the original XCOM and XCOM: Enemy Unkown as inspirations for the game, though players may recall FTL: Faster Than Light and Spelunky when it comes to the game's replayability. Salvaged's crew, environments, enemies and spoils are all procedurally generated, and like the aforementioned roguelikes, once a crewmember dies, they will be gone forever. The developer is seeking $125,000 by Thursday, May 15 to fund the game, of which it is just scratching the $10,000 mark as of this writing. [Image: Opposable Games]
End of Nations development halted
Development on End of Nations has officially stopped. Trion Worlds first halted the game in late 2013, recently telling Video Gamer it is "currently focusing the company's energy and creativity on Rift, Defiance, Trove, ArcheAge, and some new projects that we will be revealing soon." The game's website no longer resolves to any landing page and the last posts on its Facebook and Twitter pages were from August 2013, right around the time Trion Worlds shuttered its San Diego studio. At the time, the publisher opted to move development of End of Nations, along with that of Defiance and ArcheAge, to its Redwood City studio. It also named Scott Hartsman CEO of the company, who left his former role as COO of Trion Worlds in January 2013 before the appointment in August. [Image: Trion Worlds]
First look at sci-fi RTS Etherium
Etherium is a new real-time strategy game in development at Tindalos Interactive that, like so many before it, sees players battling over a precious resource that is both futuristic and totally fictional: The titular "etherium." "The solo campaign in Etherium is non-linear: You are free to decide how your conquests progress," states publisher Focus Home Interactive. "Manage your resources, expand your colonies and extend your control of the map to assemble an army capable of crushing your opponents. Epic battles will ensue between formidable armies comprising numerous units: infantry, tanks, aircraft, and even gigantic colossi of war several meters high; real machines of destruction! You will also use scientific research to develop a tech tree enabling you to unlock new units and upgrades, access new structures to develop your colony and to use new special skills." So far, so typical of the genre, but where Etherium differentiates itself is in its "dynamic weather system." According to examples offered by Focus Home Interactive, players might use a rolling sandstorm to cover their advance into an enemy base, or wait for a river to freeze before using the newly formed ice bridge as a staging point for a sneak attack. Above you'll find Etherium's debut trailer while screenshots can be found in the gallery below. For more information, visit the game's official website.
Next-gen strategy game engine lets you control an army of 5,000 units at one time
Every real-time strategy game has some kind of population cap, limiting the number of units that can be placed simultaneously on a player's terrain. This limit can stem from the designers' need to balance competition between armies, but ultimately it'll also have something to do with the underlying hardware in a PC or console, because a processor will slow down if it's asked to simulate too many independent, physical 3D objects at once. Some RTS games set the limit at 50-70 units, while others can cope with as many as 500, but a new game engine called Nitrous takes things up a level: It uses AMD's Mantle programming tool to speed up communication between the CPU and GPU, allowing up to 5,000 AI- or physics-driven objects (i.e., not mindless clones or animations) to be displayed onscreen at one time. Coming up, we've got a 1080p video of Star Swarm, a demo simulation that shows off what Nitrous can do, plus an explanation of how Oxide Games, the company behind Star Swarm, made this possible.
Tower of Elements 2 funded on Kickstarter
Now that Tower of Elements 2 has matched its funding goal of $10,000 for release on PC, Max and Linux platforms, we can start preparing for a different kind of war. Claiming victory in its battles will rely more on a player's organizational and leading skills than how many experience points they've poured into an attack attribute. Tower of Elements 2 will be a hybrid of real-time strategy and puzzle elements, asking you to juggle the direction of your capital while pummeling opponents with match-3 elemental spells. Players will organize the elemental tiles within 50 towers across 10 regions in the game, casting spells down lanes toward opponents depending on wherever a match is made. Towers won't all be designed the same way, however - while one may equip you with two long rows of tiles, the next might have a smaller, diamond-shaped space for the elemental ammo. Some towers will contain special tiles that are locked or frozen into place too, so players will need to get creative. Decisions made in the capital will determine the qualities a player's followers display. Depending on its leadership, the capital will reflect one of four culture traits; Martial, Druidic, Republic and Elemental. Tower of Elements 2's pitch page also explains that capital will allow players to "construct and upgrade buildings, grow your population, research spells, construct implements of war, recruit elite troops and much more." At the time of this writing, Tower of Elements 2 has gathered $4,278 more than developer Frogdice's funding goal, but stretch goals are "coming soon" should you be interested in helping fund its development. The funding campaign will conclude on January 5. Tower of Elements 2 is planning on a February release for backers, with a public release following "a month or two later." Frogdice's previous project, Dungeon of Elements, was successfully funded in June and was released on schedule.
World Zombination beta early next year, launch in the spring
During a demo session at the PAX Prime Indie Mega Booth, Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak told Joystiq that a beta for World Zombination, the studio's strategy game that pits zombies against humans, is expected early next year, with a full launch planned for sometime in the spring. World Zombination is due first on iPad and Android tablets, with phones to follow, and then PC and Mac. "I think we'll try to target the iPad 2, but we'll certainly do iPad 3, 4 and whatever's coming next," Sivak said. "It'll be playable on the phone, as well. We're building it foremost to be a tablet experience but we'll bring it across platforms. It'll be a universal app and it's a shared world across devices." As for pricing, Sivak said that Proletariat is still working that out, though two initial pricing models seem to be frontrunners. "We've been toying around with two options: One is a premium to purchase the app – because it is kind of like an MMO, some amount of paying for new content like when we release new units and things like that," Sivak said. "The other one is just going like how the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was, where you have progression and you unlock and buy booster packs. So that would be more of the free-to-play model.We haven't really gotten to the point where we're seriously talking about that, we're just trying to build a game that's like an MMO that feels like you could play it instantaneously and still have the same sort of team guild feel that traditional MMOs have."
Why Age of Empires Online failed
Since the beginning of this year, Age of Empires Online has shifted into stagnation and decline -- and done so intentionally. So why did Microsoft Studios decide to all but abandon the future of this game? In short, the title launched with far too little content, a bad business model, and couldn't crank out the goods fast enough to retain an audience. This resulted in a sharp drop-off from 100,000 players to 15,000 in a few months. Executive Producer Kevin Perry criticized the game's launch at GDC Europe, pointing at its skimpy features (including only two civilizations at launch) and bad public perception: "You don't get a soft launch for a branded title. Players come there for your brand. You only get word-of-mouth once. Whenever we got new players, they always came in with the overhead, 'but I heard this game sucks.' That hill was extremely difficult to climb." Even after tinkering with the game's cost, adding in more content, and figuring out ways to allow players to spend more money, the company ultimately realized that the players were mostly demanding new content which couldn't be generated to make a profit. "The content itself was too expensive to create," Perry admitted. "We did do a lot of things right, but they weren't enough to actually save the game."
Meridian: New World is a sci-fi RTS ripped from one guy's brain
Meridian: New World is a new real-time strategy game from independent studios Headup Games and Elder Games, due to launch in Q2 2014 for the PC. It's the brainchild of Hungarian indie Ede Tarsoly, who's spent the last two years building the game. With a strong focus on a single-player narrative campaign, Meridian: New World will employ customizable loadouts for units – rocket launchers, plasma cannons and mining drills are a few weapon types. A full suite of level editing tools will also ship with the game and players can grab custom maps through a built-in downloader. The decision to omit multiplayer came down to resources. "I simply don't have the resources required to polish both a single and a multiplayer mode so I had to make a decision between single and multiplayer," Tarsoly told Joystiq. "I already had part of the story written back when development started, so I decided to develop the single player mode."
End of Nations rebranded as a MOBA
Trion's End of Nations, which started its life as an MMORTS, is now being called a MOBA, according to the game's website and discovered by Eurogamer. The game suffered through some layoffs late last year as developer Petroglyph handed the game over to its publisher, Trion Worlds. All's been quiet on the EoN front since then, but the changes from the original game to a MOBA seem to already be underway as shown off by five hero vehicle images on the website. If you'd like to find out more about what Trion is calling "The first MOBA RTS," head on over to the game's official site and sign up for the beta.
Syndicate Wars successor Satellite Reign heads to Kickstarter
As expected, real-time strategy game Satellite Reign recently began its Kickstarter project, and will need £350,000 ($532,455) by July 28 to become a reality. Satellite Reign is a real-time strategy game that draws inspiration from Syndicate Wars, another tactical game developed in 1996 for PlayStation and DOS by 5 Lives lead Mike Diskett. The project boasts emergent gameplay within a "living metropolis," along with tactical combat driven by different character classes, weapons and augmentations. Satellite Reign's crowdfunding campaign is already off to a great start, as it has raised £95,474 ($145,244) thanks to 3,355 backers so far. The developer is looking to bring the game to Steam and GOG for PC, Mac and Linux, with DRM-free options being made available to all backers.
