A few years, a few million dollars, and the guidance of a few former Starcraft and Warcraft devs later, new-age sci-fi FPS Stormgate has finally left early access and made its official debut on Steam. The game entered early access just under a year ago, and in that time it's accrued 7,768 Steam user reviews averaging exactly 50% positive.
Last August, production director Tim Morten reckoned the mixed reviews were fine because, "I think for an Early Access game to live up to where StarCraft 2 is today is not a reasonable expectation." He pointed to the "iterative process" the game would see, saying it's "not something we can just get right on the first swing." In fairness, at the time of writing, the game's recent reviews trend a little higher with 232 reviews at 58% positive, so the response is improving, albeit more slowly than the devs had presumably hoped.
Stormgate is a free-to-play RTS that, according to the folks at developer Frost Giant Studios, remains in very active development despite leaving early access. The studio has unveiled an updated roadmap, with "near future" updates bringing more units and game modes as well as a game editor alpha, and updates "on the horizon" including a co-op overhaul and expansion, a new campaign, a custom games editor and ecosystem, and more free missions.
Today, Stormgate has launched with the completed Ashes of Earth campaign, a 1v1 PvP mode, a Sigma Labs mode which includes a terrain editor alpha and 3-player co-op, and an AI Skirmish mode with two challenging missions.
The full patch notes, available here, are predictably enormous. And even this launch is just the start, Frost Giant says.
Game director Tim Campbell, credited on the likes of Warcraft 3 and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, outlines future plans for Stormgate in a new dev diary.
"This is the Stormgate launch, but our job's not finished," he says. "We plan to be in active development for a long time to come. On deck next are the addition of our 3v3 Team Mayhem mode to Sigma Labs, a significant overhaul and relaunch of our 3-player co-op PvE mode, the addition of 3-player co-op support for the Ashes of Earth campaign so you can play our storyline together with friends, a significant expansion of our editor – including the addition of triggers and scripting – and we're also going to be releasing a few more free campaign missions for everyone to enjoy.
"This launch is a really big moment for us, but it's also just one more step in the ongoing development of Stormgate," Campbell says. "With your help, we believe that campaign 1, Ashes of Earth, is going to be the bridge that truly enables us to achieve the grand vision and the ultimate goals that we've had for Stormgate since the day we started on the project."
Stormgate has been in the works for several years, having smashed a Kickstarter campaign after generating tens of millions of dollars in investment. The decision to launch the game when it was still technically not finished in version 0.6, rather than the traditional 1.0 finish line, sparked some criticism and confusion, with the devs shifting to codenames like Necrolyte (that's today's launch) and Mammoth (that was the previous build) for updates.
"This approach will allow us to properly recognize each release for what it is: not an incremental addition to a progress bar with an arbitrary '1.0' at the end," the studio wrote.
Our early access Stormgate review dubbed it a nostalgic and solid addition to a neglected genre, though it could feel sluggish and a bit too referential at times.
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