"WorldShift is a next-gen cyber-fantasy RTS game designed to be quick and very easy to learn and play. It offers hectic, fierce encounters all around the Earth and a fascinating story uncovering ancient secrets about the true nature of the Shard and the Plague. But also, WorldShift introduces many features new to the genre, like modifiable factions, unique cooperative multiplayer gameplay, and more".
So says developer Black Sea Studios about its game WorldShift, which it's just announced today. First screenshots have accompanied the unveiling.
As for the storyline, it deals with an artefact known as Shard Zero, which was first discovered in the 21st century. The artefact, spreading mysterious plague, twisted and disrupted the "very nature of space and life" and collided with Earth bringing an end to our civilisation.
Skip forward a few thousand years into the future and Humans have developed a new culture, Black Sea tells us, "and now live in 5 mega-cities, struggling every day for the precious resources they need to survive. The rest of Earth is populated by the Tribes, successors of early humans that were affected by the plague."
WorldShift features three playable races, and the developer's shunned the traditional tech trees in favour of items and powerful relics that it explains players can use "to freely change their gameplay and preferred tactics and to surprise their foes."
"The players", it continues, "will gather items as they fight their opponents and as rewards for completing missions. But to discover the most powerful relics, they must form teams with their most trusted friends and embark on deadly missions where it is difficult to survive and where the real challenges await." Very dramatic.
There's not really much you can say about RTS games before launch - they usually look pretty similar.
But what struck me about this one is how similar the environments look to those of Guild Wars. It's almost as if they've taken the maps straight from it.
The gameplay sounds a bit like Mech Commander, where you equip your mechs with purchased or salvaged stuff and where you have pilots that gain experience in each mission.
As the above post says it's difficult to tell what it's going to be like but I doubt that they can reinvent the genre.
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