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Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds Entertainment will launch a new and distinctly not-Subnautica game this September: a digital miniatures strategy RPG called Moonbreaker, inspired by the likes of Warhammer and Hearthstone.
As the studio announced at today's Gamescom Opening Night Live showcase, Moonbreaker will launch in Steam Early Access on September 29, with new seasons of free content containing multiple units and other additions rolling out every four months.
This won't be a free-to-play game, and while it will offer booster packs of units, Unknown Worlds claims that the $30 Early Access bundle comes with enough resources to get all 50-ish launch units and then some. You won't get the highest rarity versions of everyone instantly, but rarity differences are purely cosmetic and everything is unlockable through gameplay, as well as a mastery system similar to DOTA's.
"We want this game to last decades, and in order for it to last decades, we kind of need to do something like that," studio co-founder Charlie Cleveland says of the unit packs.
Moonbreaker began as a passion project for Cleveland and co-founder Max McGuire roughly five years ago, right around the time the studio was finishing work on Subnautica Below Zero. It's set in an original sci-fi universe shaped by Mistborn author Brandon Sanderson, who teased his involvement in a new game last year.
At a preview event, Cleveland described Moonbreaker as a "rule-changing game" designed to make collecting and playing with miniatures more accessible, less time-consuming, and less expensive. Unknown Worlds hopes to do for miniatures "what Hearthstone did for [Magic: The Gathering]," as Cleveland puts it. The backdrop to its strategic combat is a gorgeous fleet of miniature figures to collect then paint using snappy tools meant to be accessible even to non-artists.
The gorgeous default and unlockable paint jobs for each model were all made using the same tools available to players, though they were done by professional miniatures painters. The devs also hope to add a way to share and import custom paint jobs in the future, and Cleveland says they're also exploring kitbashing potential for even more personalized miniatures.
Out in the field, Moonbreaker plays like a turn-based strategy game with some clear XCOM blood in it. The basic goal of each match is to kill the enemy Captain using your Captain and Crew. Like XCOM, hard and soft cover as well as other obstacles will affect your line of sight and your odds of landing an attack. However, unlike most real miniatures, your Captain and Crew units don't have an attack range nor are they tied to a movement grid. They can go in any direction and try to attack virtually anything, though distance and cover will affect accuracy.
There's more than a bit of Hearthstone in Moonbreaker's mechanics, too. It's meant to be a fast game, for one; matches can end in 10 minutes or less, especially in PvP which has a turn timer of 75 seconds. Your team of 11 units (10 Crew and one Captain) also functions a bit like a deck. You have to spend a mana-like resource called Cinder to draw new units, play units from your hand, and use the active abilities of your Crew and Captain, and this makes you build a mana curve of sorts. Each match also lets you draft a set of skills for your spaceship which work on a turn-based cooldown, adding another wrinkle to each fight.
Cleveland says Moonbreaker is something "between poker and chess." Along with the single-player and PvP, he points to a Cargo Run rogue-like mode that takes the game completely off the rails with wild collectibles and challenges in the vein of Hearthstone's Dungeon Run.
Cleveland says Sanderson was "the perfect fit" for building a sci-fi fantasy world that's "maybe even cooler than Warhammer."
