Frost Giant Studios, the studio founded by former Blizzard veterans, has announced its debut game: Stormgate.
Stormgate is set to be a free-to-play real-time strategy game, built using Unreal Engine 5. Given the team working on Stormgate, it might come as no surprise that it looks like the Warcraft 4 Blizzard never made – albeit one a science-fiction aesthetic.
"We are building Stormgate for the real-time strategy community – past, present, and future," says Tim Morten, CEO and production director at Frost Giant Studios, who once helped to ship Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. "Our vision is to create a social experience that breaks down the barriers that have kept people away, to welcome back players who have been waiting for the next great RTS, and to prove that the RTS genre can thrive once again."
Set hundreds of years in the future, Stormgate is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth where humans are caught in an epic conflict against an alien threat. Frost Giant promises that Stormgate will launch with two races – the mech riding humans and demonic Infernal host – although more will come to the game over time.
Frost Giant has also emphasized a focus on multiplayer – touting a 3vE co-op game mode, as well as other co-operative and competitive options such as 1v1 ranked and team-based 3v3 modes. The studio is also promising that Stormgate will be a "next-generation esport", although it's too early to say whether its dream of "high skill ladder matchmaking and competitive tournaments accessible directly from within the game" will be achievable from launch.
Either way, Stormgate sounds like an impressive new RTS game – one born of the Blizzard mold, designed to offer accessible strategy action and deep, responsive options for building armies and sending them into the battle. Stormgate is currently in the pre-alpha development stage and is scheduled to commence beta testing in 2023.
In the meantime, here are the best strategy games you can play right now.
