BattleForge is an online-focused fantasy RTS game that blends traditional strategy elements with card collecting.
Having been in development at Germany-based EA Phenomic for over three years, we recently had a chance to check it out ahead of its March release for PC.
"BattleForge is a unique mix of trading card games and real time strategy," EA Phenomic marketing director Keith Anderson told us.
"At the heart of it it's a real time strategy game and you use virtual cards to construct your army. These virtual cards you can play instantly, so there's no base building, no production queues and no waiting for the game to do things for you. You take the cards and play them directly into battle."
Initially the game will feature 200 different playing cards, 50 for each of the four elemental factions (Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow), which in turn are divided into units, spells and buildings. You can combine cards from any of the four factions to form a deck, although it's "harder to manage" four different factions in your army.
Power and orbs are the resources used for in-game production. A card's orbs, between one and four and of different colours, are displayed in the top right corner of the card in question.
"There are two resources in the game which you have to try to get control of," explained Anderson. "One is monuments, which generate orbs. When you capture a monument you can choose the colour of the orb you want from it.
"The other is power wells. These give you power which accumulates over time and is then depleted as you cast a spell [or bring into play units and structures from your deck].
To play a unit, building or spell you simply select its card icon at the bottom of the screen and click an activation area on the battlefield where you want to summon it. You'll need to summon cards in the vicinity of your other units or buildings - the closer they are, the more powerful they'll be.
Plus, once your power is completely depleted you'll have to wait for it to build up before you can cast spells again, or bring more units and buildings into the world.
"So strategically you want to have power wells so you generate energy but you also want to make sure you capture monuments so that you have more and more orbs available to you which allow you to cast the high end spells in your deck. To get four orbs you'll have to make significant inroads into enemy territory to capture their monuments," said Anderson.
"Within BattleForge there are also certain strategic points in the game that aren't just power wells or orb generators," he added. "These are fortifications.
"Where there are no enemies present and if you have sufficient power you can build fortifications within the board. You can choose which way they face and then man them with certain units - range units are ideal, so you can position your archers on the top of the fortifications and they can then start firing at the enemy.
"For the enemy to get through them it has to beat down the walls and break down the barriers you put in place before it can start attacking you."
Before jumping straight into the action though, your fist step will be to formulate your deck and strategy in the Forge. Essentially the Forge is a sandbox where you can start playing around with the cards and armies at your disposal, a pre-constructed scenario where you can construct your basic deck and get a feel for how it will play out in battle.
Your basic deck consists of up to 20 cards, displayed across the bottom of your screen, "much like you'd see an MMO ability selection", said Anderson.
There are four pre-defined decks within the game, one for each of the factions. Initially you might choose to use one of these to ease yourself into the game, before becoming more confident and choosing to customise your deck by swapping in and out other cards from your collection.
The Nature faction possesses offensive spells such as a lightning bolt, and healing spells, but its real abilities are its big creatures. At the bottom end of the scale you've got basic archers and basic units, creatures like werewolves and windweavers, and at the top end you've got creatures like the Colossus.
The Colossus is designed more as an end game unit, said Anderson. "It's a big powerful guy with special abilities that can be activated on the card either from the top icon on the screen or from your card selection box.
"Fire is about aggression, it's all about direct damage, spells that will brutalise your opponent and quick aggressive creatures. At the top end of the scale the classic Fire creature is something like a fire dragon.
"One of the other key characteristics of Fire is its ability to lay down direct damage spells. Most of the Fire spells do not involve friendly fire, so you can put them in where your units are."
In contrast, Frost is a very defensive faction. "You do have flying creatures and other creatures like that in Frost, but its speciality is setting up buildings and being able to defend them. You can basically put your buildings into play and then set up spells and abilities which will enhance the defensive powers of your forces."
Shadow, which Anderson referred to as "the darker power within BattleForge", is a much harder faction to play. "Shadow as an element is all about doing a lot of damage and harm to your opponent but at the same time balancing that against the harm you'll do to yourself, so Shadow spells have a lot of friendly fire effects.
"The initial faction decks are all about single powers, but as you go into the game you'll want to find out how the powers merge together," he said. ""It's a classic game in that it's easy to learn but hard to master."
BattleForge will ship with 30 maps or scenarios across its single player campaign, co-op play (which offers two, four and 12 player battles), and player versus player campaigns (one on one or two on two). As you progress and unlock new scenarios you'll see them appear on the game's map.
Anderson also said BattleForge's community aspects will play a major role in the game. As well as co-op play, the game will feature tournaments, guilds, chat rooms and a marketplace for trading and buying your cards, which will be housed in the Forge.
A list on the right hand side of the screen will show you all of the players in the Forge at that time. You'll be able to purchase, sell or trade cards with these players, or team up and join a game together.
If you don't fancy taking your chances at the auction house, you'll be able to increase your card collection by purchasing booster packs.
Setting you back 250 BattleForge points, or about £2.50, packs will consist of eight random cards, although they'll always feature one rare, two uncommon and five common cards.
So the game won't follow a subscription-based model. In Europe the boxed title will cost €49.99 (near enough £50).
It'll ship with four ready to play decks, plus 3000 BattleForge points which will allow you to buy 12 booster packs, giving you a total of almost 160 cards to play with from the get go.
Reminds me a bit of the Might & Magic series. Could be good but I'll likely never find out for myself as it's EA who is publishing the game and that is bound to mean ridiculous amounts of DRM and limited activations are par for the course.
well if EA releases it on Steam (as they have some of their recent releases like Mirror's Edge... though only in NA so far) then DRM wont apply.
as for the game itself, it seems pretty good, though i wont be buying any of the booster packs. i would only buy those big whole new decks that other card games release, like Might&Magic
EA has included DRM and limited activations on some of its Steam released games. "Red Alert 3" and "Crysis: Warhead" are just two titles that come to mind. Always read the fine print.
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