After dropping a massive surprise StarCraft 2 update late last month, Blizzard is back with a public test release of a patch that remedies some of fans' balance requests – but sadly, it does not address one glaring issue many folks have had since late May.

In case you missed the news when it happened, StarCraft 2 did indeed receive an update last month that practically changed the 2010 real-time strategy gem from the ground up.

Blizzard described it as primarily focusing on "extending the early and mid-game experience, allowing players to remain competitive on one to three bases for longer periods," with the most notable tweak being a reduction in starting workers from 12 to eight.

Now, Blizzard has another patch up its sleeve – one that it says comes with "adjustments based on your feedback." As per the developer's official post on the new changes, there are some balance changes affecting spawn rates, mineral costs, speeds, and more, with a couple of bug fixes and quality-of-life tweaks, too.

The StarCraft 2 studio hasn't, however, gone back on its change to the starting worker number… even though fans want it to.

PTR notes update from r/starcraft

Over on Reddit, the community is sharing its thoughts on 5.0.16 – the new public test release update – and, of course, the topic of the starting worker number is everywhere.

The top reply states that Blizzard is "moving in the right direction," but that's "excluding [the] worker start number." Another response adds, "Literally nobody wants eight starting workers." It certainly seems to be the case, judging by fans' reaction to the patch.

As one person writes, "They really seem to be fixed on the eight-worker change. Such an awful change. This is the kind of change that will eliminate a good chunk of the current player base."

That might sound a bit dramatic, but to be fair, people are upset about it. It does add a bit more stress to the whole "strategy" aspect of StarCraft 2, emphasizing a slower start and preventing early economic spikes… but that doesn't mean fans are happy with it.

Here's hoping Blizzard hears everyone out in its next patch. It feels like it's taken a bit of a swing here and missed with the whole starting worker thing after the strategy game's huge May update – but it does show devs are listening… even if only a bit.

World of Warcraft Camelot discovery gives the MMO's community its most compelling evidence yet that Blizzard might actually turn a myth into a long-hoped-for reality

Nearly a year has passed since the last StarCraft 2 update dropped, and Blizzard is back now with another – and this one packs quite a punch.

In case you're out of the loop, StarCraft 2 just got a new patch – and it fundamentally changes the 2010 real-time strategy gem from the ground up. As per the official notes on Blizzard's website, the update primarily focuses on "extending the early and mid-game experience, allowing players to remain competitive on one to three bases for longer periods." And, oh boy, does it do just that… and more, too.

"We've introduced changes to make non-warped Gateway play a more viable path," Blizzard continues, "while also increasing overall strategic diversity across all three races." There are also, of course, plenty of quality-of-life improvements in place "to enhance the overall player experience."

So, what makes this StarCraft 2 update such a big deal? Well, most notably, it reduces the starting workers from twelve to eight.

StarCraft II 5.0.16 PTR Patch Notes from r/starcraft

This opens up the potential for new opening strategies, just as the old swap from six to 12 with Legacy of the Void did.

The Warpgate tweaks are wild as well, with research tech now in the Cybernetics Core rather than the Gateway. Warpgate Research now speeds up Gateway unit production time by 35%, though – at the cost of 50 Gas and Minerals. Thankfully, the Warp-in Time has also decreased to three seconds (from 3.6s and 11.4s).

Other adjustments include changes to default minerals, reduced supply from base buildings, and a plethora – I mean a LOT – of bug fixes.

Unsurprisingly, the community is losing it over patch 5.0.16, taking to forums like Reddit to discuss it. Many fans aren't even convinced it's real, it's that mind-boggling. "I thought it was April Fool's," as one person writes. Another jokes, "StarCraft 3."

My personal favorite sums the situation up nicely: "Wtf is happening?" Indeed, anon. Indeed.

Overall, I'd say most players are at least excited, with some describing the update as bringing "absolutely groundbreaking changes and amazing QoL." And, understandably, they're shocked.

As one fan puts it, "I started playing in 2020, I saw nothing even coming close to how wild these changes are." Blizzard has managed to blow all of our minds, eh?

Here's hoping that the new StarCraft update doesn't prove too chaotic a change, and fans adapt to what might just stand as the RTS game's most notable patch in a long time.

Diablo 4 Season 14 brings controversial Mythic Unique changes and heavy nerfs, but hey, at least Blizzard is finally introducing one long-requested mode.

Realtime strategy games the dizzying pace of professional StarCraft or stumble into the arcane lore of Total War: Warhammer and you might get the impression that the entire genre is comprised of systems-driven time sinks, where it takes hours of research on a community wiki to even understand how the menus work.

With its straightforward, pared-down mechanics, Age Of Empires 2 is a sharp contrast to that uninviting stereotype. There are only four resources (wood, gold, food and stone) and the research tree, such as it can be called, consists wholly of material upgrades for your military and agriculture. If you want to increase the productivity of your empire in one of the other best RTS games, you might need to fine-tune your citizens' wages or cultivate and implement a new form of government. In Age Of Empires 2, you must build a wheelbarrow.

But despite its simplistic central design, no two matches or missions are ever the same, and the scope for experimenting with different strategies is boundless. Stronghold and Medieval: Total War may seem like Age Of Empires II's nearest mechanical relatives, but it perhaps has more in common with Portal or the original version of Resident Evil 4, games that give you only limited tools (blue and orange portal; gun, knife, and grenade) and challenge you to adapt their uses to ever- more-complex scenarios. It takes maybe ten minutes to learn how to play Age Of Empires 2, but given how each mission introduces new premises and twists – you know exactly how to build a successful town, but now you have to do it on a map with no lumber, while fending off waves of enemy cavalry – it still feels deep and unpredictable, even for those who have been on board since 1999.

This all hints at the secret of the game's longevity. Now 27 years old, it has stayed alive partly owing to expansion packs, an HD remaster in 2013, and 2019's Definitive Edition. But its enduring popularity (averaging around 28,000 concurrent Steam users per day, Age Of Empires 2 still has more players on Valve's platform than the Definitive Editions of Age Of Empires 3 and 4 combined) is largely the product of its visual design, its soundtrack, and how Ensemble Studios blends historical fact with high drama in the superbly written campaigns. Compared to some of its RTS contemporaries, the true beauty of Age Of Empires 2 lies in everything outside of the core mechanics.

Strategy Refined

More so than in the late '90s, we now have an accepted genre of 'cosy games', games that let you feel peaceful and at ease, or have the same inviting effect on your imagination as indulging in hobbies or crafts. While training an army and viciously pillaging the lands of rival nations is the ostensible 'point' of Age Of Empires 2, aesthetically and in practice it becomes more like a model or diorama builder, an exercise in 'cosy' creativity. Given the fastidious level of detail in the units and buildings, and the natural splendour of the mission maps, with their forests, rivers and sweeping, snow-covered plains, one of the greatest pleasures in Age Of Empires II comes from ignoring the objectives you've been set and instead pouring your resources into designing idyllic medieval towns.

Once you've raised a monastery, a fishing village and a row of houses, the game starts to feel more like a hybrid of strategy game and city builder, a tangential link between the all-out brutality of Warcraft and Command & Conquer and the pastoral harmony of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. You can sit and admire your individual villagers going diligently about their work, listening at the same time to the pleasing, rhythmic chop-chop sound of axes in the forest. War is inevitable, but the world of Age Of Empires 2, teeming with wild animals and natural wonders, gives you something to explore and indulge in beyond bloodshed.

That sense of scale and grandeur – the feeling that you're laying the municipal and cultural foundations of human history, not just tearing it all down – is accentuated by Stephen Rippy's score, particularly tracks such as Shamburger and T Station (strange, non-sequitur song titles are one of the composer's trademarks). Using contemporary medieval instruments and slow, emergent melodies, Rippy's music adds mystique and gravity to even minor accomplishments, the launching of a new fishing boat accompanied by the hopeful lilt of a wooden flute, the slow unveiling of an impassable cliff face given dark foreboding by thudding tribal drums.

The broader sound design, meanwhile – the dozens of different noises that variously signify the recruitment of a fresh soldier, the beginning of a major battle, or the arrival of a new villager ("hee-haa") – serves a thematic purpose as much as a practical one, helping to create the sense that these seemingly disparate moments in your empire's history are actually all parts of a single grand composition. As you train more knights, sow more crops and crush more enemies, you create an unusual kind of music in turn, the different chimes pops and alerts merging into a literal rhythm of progress.

Between the missions, Age Of Empires 2 offers a different perspective on history, one that switches from a broad- scale view of nations and regimes to a closer focus on the experiences of individual people. Attila's campaign, for example, is narrated by a Frankish monk, traumatised from witnessing the brutal battle tactics of the Huns. The history of Saladin and the Saracen empire is recounted by a nameless Norman knight, who becomes lost in the Egyptian desert while fighting the Crusades.

Ensemble goes to great lengths to preserve and present factual minutiae – take the third mission in the Joan Of Arc story, where you come up against three British strongholds, recreations of the castles oJargeau, Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency that were captured by the French during the 1429 Loire campaign. But this scrupulous attention to historical fact is balanced by rousing voice performances, and cutscenes that evoke the melodrama of national myths and legends. "A blue wolf took as his spouse a fallow doe," goes the opening line to the Genghis Khan campaign. "They settled at the head of the Onon River to raise their offspring. And there were born the Mongols." You can pick up a lot of knowledge from playing Age Of Empires II, but it's wrapped up in big, bold tales of adventure.

Almost three decades since the game was released, however, its most striking aspect is its violence; the tragedy and brutality that run through every mission. RTS games always involve killing thousands of enemy troops and civilians, and sacrificing thousands of your own in the process, but when so much of your time here is spent nurturing your nascent townships and carefully organising your armies and villagers, the death and destruction hit that much harder. The first hour of a campaign mission might be spent arranging your knights into divisions, assigning each battle group a complement of monks and repair workers to support them on their expedition.

One misjudged offensive later, all that remains of that lovingly fostered band of brothers are their skeletons, and the skeletons of their horses, which you have to watch sink gradually into the blood-soaked soil. And when you successfully ambush an enemy battalion or invade a rival city, the effect is reversed: CPU opponents will often insist on fighting to the last unarmed citizen, forcing you to wipe entire cities off the map if you want to win the game. The savagery of a victory becomes just as hard to reconcile as the bitterness of a defeat.

Face the consequences

You also have to face the consequences of destroying the environment. At the beginning of each mission, the map is bristling with green, virgin forests. By the time you've finished building your barracks, your archery ranges and your sorties of trebuchets, however, the world around you is reduced to yellowing waste ground, pockmarked by dead stumps. If you overwork a patch of farmland, you'll hear the sound of sand falling from between a person's fingers, signalling that the once- fertile soil has been ploughed into dust.

Tear down a rival nation's wonder – a great cathedral or marble temple – and you'll hear the sound of a lightning bolt, implying a terrible act of devastation that will echo through the epochs. Considering it belongs to a genre that normally encourages total annihilation, this more layered illustration of violence, against both people and the world, is another reason Age Of Empires 2 still stands as a wonder itself.

Barring remasters, rereleases, and some middle-budget efforts that appeal to nostalgia, RTS games still seem to be out of favour in 2026. Their fall from prominence, relative to their '90s heyday, is perhaps partly the result of drilling too far into their niche appeal, the realtime strategy canon becoming increasingly dense and systems-driven until nobody but die-hard devotees could keep up. In the context of that shift, even though it's pushing 30 – a crumbly age within the world of video games – Age of Empires 2 feels modern, its accessibility and its mix of tines, timbres, and styles of play suggesting that, far from a relic of the past, the RTS genre still has swathes of uncharted territory waiting to be discovered.

This article originally appeared in issue 422 of Edge Magazine. For more just like this, consider subscribing to get the full mag delivered to your door every month.

Frost Giant Studios has announced that the online functions of its debut RTS game Stormgate will be shutting down for the foreseeable future at the end of this month due to its partner being bought by an AI company.

Frost Giant Studios was founded in 2020 by former Blizzard developers Tim Morten and Tim Campbell who were previously leads on expansions for the likes of StarCraft 2 and Warcraft 3 (and my beloved, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, in Campbell's case). So with a pedigree like that, a RTS game was sure to follow, and after a very successful Kickstarter, Stormgate entered early access in 2024, with the full launch around a year later in August 2025. And, despite mixed reviews for the game, the devs pledged to support it for years to come.

However, less than a year after launching, it was announced on the Stormgate Discord server that the RTS title will be losing its offline features at the end of the month. As spotted by Delisted Games, a message released yesterday explains, "Our game server orchestration partner, Hathora, has been purchased by an AI company, and they are winding down their service at the end of April. This will create a planned outage for Stormgate’s multiplayer modes."

It's explained that "Stormgate will be patched so that it can be played offline, but online modes will not be available at that point." And, from the sounds of things, it isn't a given that the game will eventually come back online, as the post continues: "We hope to restore online play in a future patch, but this work will be dependent on Frost Giant finding a partner to support ongoing operations."

Hathora has released a statement on its website discussing its acquisition by Fireworks AI, in which it also suggests that developers move their online services using its "exclusive transition partner," GameFabric. It says: "We know your live-ops cannot afford downtime. To ensure a safe harbor for your multiplayer games, Hathora has selected GameFabric by Nitrado as the best solution for its existing customers and its exclusive transition partner."

The company is offering a zero-downtime migration for this, but presently the developers of Stormgate have not mentioned if this is an option, however, some players have asked about it in the Discord server.

So, if the AI slop machine wasn't already content with ruining your social media, having a huge environmental impact, skyrocketing the cost of tech due to RAM shortages, and sneaking its way into games, we now have it to thank for a game losing its online servers.

EA is "releasing the fully recovered source code" for 4 classic Command & Conquer titles, and it's the best thing a major publisher can do for game preservation

Blizzard has announced two weeks worth of events highlighting major updates to many of the studio's most notable games, with showcases dedicated to World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Diablo. But for StarCraft fans now entering their 11th year of desperation for the next entry in the beloved RTS series, the news is a little bit painful.

The studio repeatedly uses the phrase "the next chapter" to describe this series of showcases, which begin later this week and run through February 11. "Over the next few weeks, each world will showcase what comes next. If these games mean something to you, we'd love to see you there," the company says in the description of a YouTube video announcing the event. "These aren't updates in isolation. They're part of where Blizzard is heading – together with the players who've been here all along."

The announced events are as follows.

• January 29 at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT – World of Warcraft State of Azeroth
• February 4 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT – Overwatch Spotlight
• February 9 at 9:30am PT / 12:30pm ET / 5:30pm GMT – Hearthstone Spotlight
• February 11 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm GMT – Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight

The video on this whole endeavor is a nostalgic tour through the company's history (featuring "approximately 400 artifacts from the Blizzard's physical archives," according to an accompanying press release). We see everything from oft-forgotten early console titles like The Lost Vikings and Rock n' Roll Racing up through a blank page and a BlizzCon 2026 ticket representing the studio's future.

But it's the StarCraft shrine in the middle of the video that's arguably the saddest bit. The original StarCraft launched in 1998, and the popularity of both it and its Brood War expansion pack – particularly in South Korea – helped define the rise of the early esports scene. The StarCraft 2 trilogy was seen as an overdue comeback when it began in 2010, but the series went more or less dormant after the launch of Legacy of the Void in 2015.

There are reasons to think that StarCraft is not dead, however – like reports suggesting that "StarCraft is not dead" dating back to 2024. The idea that a new StarCraft shooter is in development is being treated as more or less an open secret by fans, but that's still not quite the return to RTS glory that they truly want. Maybe we'll finally see what's next for the series at BlizzCon later this year.

There's a reason StarCraft 2 still ranks so highly on our list of the best strategy games.

Strategy games haven't been the same since the original Dawn of War. Released way back in 2004, it broke the mould with a chainsword, replacing it with something altogether different. No longer would turtling work wonders on your dismal enemies; you needed to get boots on the ground and start battling immediately. If you can't tell, I love the series, and was very excited when Dawn of War 4 got announced.

This latest title marks something of a sea change for the franchise, with long-time developers Relic being replaced by King Art, developers of Iron Harvest, taking stewardship of the franchise. It's something that they're rightfully proud of, with creative director Jan Theysen describing the challenge as "a great honor and privilege" as well as a "huge responsibility."

Asymmetric Warfare

We've certainly enjoyed what we've played so far, with resident strategy aficionado Andrew Brown absolutely loving the time he spent with its demo back in August. The latest instalment returns players to Kronus, the setting for the original Dawn of War's expansion, The Dark Crusade, approximately 200 years after the events of that game. The campaigns will feature the Blood Ravens (a Space Marines chapter created for this franchise, fact fans), the Adeptus Mechanicus, Orks, and Necrons, with a combined total of 70 missions, which is pretty wild for a modern RTS.

Each faction has its own pros and cons, but they also boast radically different playstyles. Space Marines, such as the campaign's Blood Ravens, are all about unit flexibility, with Theysen saying that "they struggle to field large armies, so strategic positioning and fortifying critical locations is key to ensure units are where they need to be".

Meanwhile the Adeptus Mechanicus, essentially Imperial engineers, "leverage their Noosphere Network to boost the effectiveness of units and structures within and [use] Augur Vision to spot enemy maneuvers within the fog of war. Creating a large, interconnected base enables the Adeptus Mechanicus to field powerful vehicles and enhance their relatively fragile infantry". The mention of large bases is interesting, placing Dawn of War 4 in the lineage of the original game, rather than its sequel.

Orks, everyone's favorite football hooligans, are far more about strength in numbers than anything particularly advanced. Theysen notes that they're capable of "easily sweeping opponents away in an unstoppable green tide", despite their individual weakness. Essentially, getting your WAAAGH on promises to be as entertainingly chaotic as it always has been.

Finally, we have the Necrons, robotic skeletons that have woken up from a 60-million-year nap and gotten out on the wrong side of bed. Their playstyle is defined by their slow but extremely hardy units that regain HP over time. They gain their strength from the Power Matrix, which Theysen says is represented as "a terrain effect that spreads from their structures and boosts their units' HP recovery even further".

With four different factions available at launch, the question of balance necessarily comes up, and King Art appears to be taking it appropriately seriously. Theysen notes various strategies that players will be able to use when playing as and against the various factions. For example, the Necrons are weakest at the start of the game – defeating them requires a speedy advance lest you be crushed by their slow, but unrelenting tide, especially as Necrons gain teleportation abilities in the late-game. This isn't the only example of a faction's gameplay style changing over time, either – Orks will have the option to go full green tide in the late game or specialize with more expensive elite units.

Factions will also have access to unique stratagems, off-map abilities that can turn a losing battle around. You can expect them to be balanced slightly differently in single-player and multiplayer modes, too, ensuring "each faction feels as lore-accurate as possible in the campaigns, while being more even-handed in multiplayer."

As you would want from a Dawn of War game that follows the lineage of its predecessors, there's not too much busywork to do. The team wants to "create gameplay that feels authentic to the fantasy of each faction within the Warhammer 40.000 universe rather than strict genre convention", which means that streamlining is required. For example, the Space Marines won't have to use worker units to construct buildings – instead, they will be dropped, fully-formed, from orbit.

The main thing that the game is trying to avoid, according to Theysen, is a reliance on "micromanagement or twitch reactions", so Starcraft, this ain't. Players will be able to upgrade units to give them more modular control over their troops, too, so the main theme appears to be one based around long-term strategic planning, rather than being able to turn on a sixpence.

As with previous Dawn of War instalments, multiplayer is also a strong focus with Dawn of War 4. The Last Stand, a horde mode, is set to make its return, as will 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 multiplayer battles. If King Art does a good job, and they seem to have so far, we may well end up with a new RTS multiplayer favorite. It's certainly an ambitious vision, and one that we'll be keeping an eye on with a lot of interest.

Nintendo has re-released the mysterious Close to You video on the Nintendo Today app today, confirming that it was Pikmin related all along.

Out of nowhere yesterday, Nintendo decided to send the internet into a frenzy by releasing a random video about a baby chasing its pacifier which decided to move on its own, seemingly unrelated to any pre-existing Nintendo games. But fans immediately began theory-crafting as to what it could be, with a popular theory being that it was a teaser for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie due to the baby sharing its hairstyle and clothing color scheme with Rosalina.

However, there were a lot of Pikmin references in there, from musical stings to a possible cryptid sighting, plus the Pikmin Bloom lore saying that Pikmin are invisible to the human eye. And the Pikmin truthers stay winning, as 24 hours later, Nintendo has reuploaded the short to the Nintendo Today App, and at first it appears to be exactly the same, but as soon as the mom leaves the room, the Pikmin appear and the context behind the runaway pacifier makes sense as Pikmin run around the room trying to steal it.

But now the question is… why? Or rather, what is this for? Is Nintendo going to release more videos like this in the lead-up to announcing a full-blown Pikmin 5? Is a Pikmin movie coming? Why release a super confusing version with no Pikmin and let Nintendo fans go wild for a day? These are questions we'll probably have to ponder for some time.

However, this could mark the return of Pikmin Short Movies, which was a collection of three shorts animated by Dynamo Pictures (now Nintendo Pictures) and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto. These proved surprisingly popular, being the second, ninth and 17th most popular videos of all time on the Nintendo YouTube account. It could be as simple as that, but the weird rollout of the video has me suspicious.

Despite being the father of Mario, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has once again affirmed Pikmin is his favourite child: "I spent a lot of time the past 5, 6 years really wanting to grow Pikmin"

Nintendo released a short video on the Nintendo Today app with no explanation, and it feels like it's hyping up something new for Pikmin.

The Nintendo Today app has been somewhat of an enigma since it launched earlier this year. You could be minding your own business and then suddenly Nintendo confirms a brand new Splatoon game out of the blue. In keeping up with its weird app, today Nintendo released an almost four-minute short film titled Close to You. This short follows a baby which drops its pacifier, which suddenly starts flying around the room on its own as the baby makes chase, resulting in it taking its first steps by the time its mom comes back into the room.

Of course, everyone's first reaction is "what is this?" There's no context for the short, there's no outright identifiable Nintendo features in the short, with the entity annoying the baby being completely invisible. Some speculate that – due to the baby's blue clothes and short blonde hair – it's a teaser for Rosalina in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (despite the difference in art style). However, there's a few details that seem to imply it's Pikmin related.

For example, at the 25 second mark when the mom closes the door and the first building block falls, a short piano sting plays the opening notes of the Pikmin main theme, before going into a different tune. But these notes return multiple times throughout the score to the short, and piano-focused tunes like this are a common sound in Pikmin scores. Plus a user on Reddit has noticed that a tune that plays towards the end is a piano version of a song the Pikmin sing in an ad for Pikmin 4.

New "Close to You" video Nintendo posted has pikmin music in it: from r/Pikmin

The objects moving on their own could be explained away as the baby not perceiving the Pikmin due to them being so small (Pikmin are roughly 1 inch tall on average), however if you look in the background at 1:39 you actually can see what looks like a red Pikmin running under the baby's crib in the background, perhaps teasing a new species of invisible Pikmin.

Of course, Nintendo does like to use Pikmin as an Easter egg in other series, such as a statue in the Super Mario Bros. Movie, and dotted all over the real life theme park, so they could be a red herring. Plus, humans should be long-dead in the Pikmin universe. But I choose to inhale the copium, and if I had to put my money on it, Nintendo is seemingly teasing a new Pikmin game or a Pikmin film, either way, we are so back.

Despite being the father of Mario, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has once again affirmed Pikmin is his favourite child: "I spent a lot of time the past 5, 6 years really wanting to grow Pikmin"

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 has been billed as a return to form for one of Warhammer's classic branches. Very importantly, it's also a big new RTS game, the kind we don't see very often nowadays. Creative director Jan Theysen of developer King Art Games reckons the genre may never be king of the mountain, but as niches go, it can still be a "big niche" home to good games and enthusiastic fans.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Theysen sizes up the position of RTS games in the year 2025. "I'm pretty sure that RTS will not be the big genre again," he begins. "It's more of a niche genre, but it's a big niche, right? And also, we felt like, okay, there are a lot of RTS fans that are just looking for the next cool, great RTS, but there are also, of course, a lot of Warhammer fans and a lot of 40K fans and Dawn of War fans and so on.

"Now, even more because of Space Marine or maybe the upcoming Henry Cavill series. So for us, it's like, if there is a sizable RTS fan community, if there is a sizable Warhammer community, maybe that's enough."

Part of the beauty of RTS games is the loyal, underserved following they can tap into, even if that audience might not be the bottomless well many large publishers are gunning for nowadays. "Let's make a great game for both of these communities," Theysen continues, "and then it doesn't have to be, you know, RTS won't kick shooters from the top of the food chain anytime soon, but that's fine, right?"

Senior game designer Elliott Verbiest touches on a key element of Dawn of War 4's production: the studio making it is big enough to tackle something with real heft – which we know to include four campaigns that are all bigger than the first Dawn of War campaign – but not so big that it gets so bogged down with de-risking that a niche genre like RTS becomes unfeasible or publisher kryptonite. Here again, small teams can be uniquely agile, and capable of punching well above their weight.

"I think something that Jan has really pointed out well here," Verbiest says, "is that RTS is something that a lot of people still hunger for and are excited about. And because King Arts – we've grown a little bit over the past few years – and due to the size where we're not a tiny, tiny indie studio, but we're not a massive AAA studio either.

"That puts us in a really sweet spot, essentially, for being able to deliver on the kind of production value that players are looking for for a real-time strategy game. And we can deliver that kind of mechanical and gameplay complexity that maybe a three-man team, for example, wouldn't be able to deliver on."

Help me, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 4 is so good I've been replaying the same mission for 3 hours and pestering its devs who have "been studying the blade and bolter."

Playing Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 for the first time, I was given access to a mission where you play as the Space Marines who have been called in to save Imperial Guard forces from a warband of orcs. That was a week ago. I've since spent upwards of three hours playing the same level over and over again, siccing a small army of space marines and dreadnoughts onto the orc-dominated map before winning (usually) and doing it all over again. Yeah, it's good.

"While everyone's been busy with summer, we've been studying the blade – and the bolter," grins Elliott Verbiest, senior game designer at developer King Art Games. I'm chatting to Verbiest and Jan Theysen, co-founder and creative director, and while neither seem particularly surprised at how much I've been digging Dawn of War 4, both are thrilled to finally be talking about it.

"If you do not hear anything from a studio for a long time, you know it's either very, very bad news, or very good news," says Theysen. "In our case, thankfully, it was very good news."

Building defenses

Unlike many of its modern contemporaries, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is not trying to reinvent the real-time strategy (RTS) genre for new audiences. Returning to the planet of Kronus, the goal is to capture resource points and develop your base, all while building and ordering an army to stop your opponent from doing the same. In this specific instance, a thin row of neutral Requisition and Power resource points are all that separates my forces from the rest of the orc-dominated map.

It's refreshingly straightforward, and King Art Games is under no illusion as to who they are making Dawn of War 4 for. "I'm pretty sure that real-time strategy will not be the big genre again," explains Theysen. "It's a niche genre, but it's a big niche, right? [...] For us it's like, if there's a sizable RTS community and a sizable Warhammer community, maybe that's enough! Let's make a great game for both of these communities – RTS won't kick shooters from the top of the food chain any time soon, but that's fine."

"We've grown a little bit over the past few years, and we're not a tiny indie studio, but we're not a massive AAA studio either," adds Verbiest. "That puts us in a really sweet spot for being able to deliver on the kind of production value that players are looking for in an RTS, and the mechanical and gameplay complexity that maybe a three-man team wouldn't be able to deliver on."

Taking command of my space marine units, Dawn of War 4 certainly plays like a classically-minded RTS. As I fight to win the level back from orcs, I'm constantly forced to think about where I'm sending my space marines and why. Each of the game's four launch factions (Blood Ravens, Orcs, Necrons, and Adeptus Mechanicus) have differing playstyles, which means that in this matchup, my space marines are incredibly powerful but almost always outnumbered by orcs – who, besides being numerous, can also litter the map with cheap defensive structures.

I don't have enough space marines to guard the resources I capture, which means my playstyle involves swinging my elite units onto a point like a sledgehammer – easily wiping out all but the largest groups of orcs – then building up turrets and missile bunkers to defend points while my own blob continues on the offensive. I adore building up defenses in strategy games, so the tactic fits snug – though my beloved turtling tactic is off the table here, as the ultimate goal is to march out to destroy the orcs' primary and secondary strongholds. The orcs are also working on three superweapons across the map, each with their own progress bar, so there's a time incentive to wipe them out before three beefy Gorkanaut walkers are unleashed. While the nearest falls easily enough, I only break the other two with help.

Command Points – a resource earned from being in combat – can buy powerful abilities called Stratagems, which for space marines range from bonus XP to cluster bombs and orbital bombardments. I go for the latter two, and both just about annihilate anything they hit. Entire units (would-be Gorkanaut included) are decimated with a carpet of cluster bombs, while the orbital bombardment proves so powerful I have to pull my own frontline back when they start dying en masse too.

Throw in the fact that space marines can pay extra to recruit units in reserve, allowing them to be dropped anywhere on the map in a bullet-spewing drop pod, and the faction ends up playing like a 40K fantasy brought to life. Though I don't play the orcs, I can see the same appeal there – creating a sprawling, rolling ball of violence, – and when a Necron surprise attack unleashes stalking robots and gauss beams into my side, I immediately decide they're going to be the first faction I play at launch.

Four factions

All of my skirmish matches end the same: with half-squads of space marines, dinged-up assault vehicles, and smoking dreadnaughts destroying the orc fortress by the skin of their teeth. But even after three hours of greenskin-stomping, it's the side of Dawn of War 4 I haven't seen that proves the most exciting: campaigns, plural.

Each of the game's four factions will have their own campaign, and Theysen tells me that each one will be longer than the original Dawn of War's campaign. "Roughly speaking" we can expect 12 to 15 missions from a campaign, though that can vary. Some missions will be optional, while others will only be available depending on the choices that players make during the campaign. Having seen the demand for more single-player and narrative elements in their last game, Iron Harvest, King Art Games was keen to push that further in Dawn of War 4.

"We basically said 'OK, let's not have [one] Space Marine campaign, or one big campaign where everybody has a little bit to play – let's do four big campaigns for each of the four factions. Let's make the campaign non-linear, or give the player meaningful decisions on who they want to play in the campaign, who survives, and so on,'" says Theysen.

There's even some "cross-campaign relevance," adds Theysen. Choose to side with a certain war boss during the Orc campaign, for example, and the one you back will become the ruling boss on Kronus – even while playing Space Marines. Some choices, like selecting a hero to play for a level, are designed to give players more say over their playstyle. "One road you can pick might be more smaller engagements, more tactical stuff," offers Theysen, "while the other one might be more full-on war with lots of units [...] You can basically pick how you play the campaigns."

Sync kills

Ultimately, Theysen says Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is intended to be a "modern interpretation of what the first Dawn of War would be today" – and while the series' roots are blatant, so too are those modern additions.

Dawn of War 4's flashiest feature is without a doubt its sync kills, which creates unique animations for fighting units. During my preview I saw one orc jump on the back of a space marine and attempt to wrestle them to the ground, only for said marine to flip the orc over his shoulder and carve it up with a chainsword. Later, another space marine wrestles their chainsword against an orc's hastily thrown-up gun, eventually knocking it to one side and hacking the orc to pieces. On both occasions, I stopped what I was doing to watch. Is my base in tatters off-screen? Er, yes. Have I forgotten to call in more Space Marines? Also yes. But did you see that?

Sync kills have been attempted to some success in the likes of Total War: Warhammer, but were often inconsistent if not outright buggy due to their technical intensity. There are "well over 10,000 permutations of units fighting," shares Verbiest, and when I tell the pair I didn't think the technology was there for this level of synchronization, Theysen confesses he didn't either.

"I was totally with you," he admits. "Three years ago, four years ago, I also was very skeptical that it's possible, but what [the animation team] came up with is basically a system that dynamically creates these animations. They basically have little snippets of animation, and depending on the situations, the system dynamically puts everything together – because it is not possible to animate all of that by hand, right?"

"It had to be something dynamic [...] But they somehow managed to create a system that does it on the fly – you can actually see it in the debug view. You can see the timeline, and how the timeline gets created, or how the animations get put into the timeline. It's wild! It's so cool."

Though my RTS-loving thumb tips the scales, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is already one of my most anticipated new games coming in 2026. At King Art Games, the same excitement is palpable. Both Verbiest and Theysen say that getting to work within 40K has been a dream come true. Theysen, who got into Warhammer through the first Dawn of War, feels strongly about making Dawn of War 4 an entry-point for 40K first-timers. Verbiest, on the other hand, is more excited by the prospect of carrying the original series' legacy forward.

"I grew up with real-time strategy games. I used to mod Red Alert 2 back in the day with a bunch of folks, and I've been a fan of Relic strategy games for a very long time – Dawn of War included," says Verbiest. "So I would consider this a huge honor. It's a real exciting opportunity to be able to give back to players who have stuck with not just the franchise, but the genre as a whole. It's an exciting way to contribute and give back to them, and show them what we can do. Strategy isn't back – it's never gone away."

Check out our pick of the best strategy games.

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.

These are the best strategy games you can play today.

It's more common than ever for games to start out in early access before launching fully. But, gamers are pretty savvy, and some have noticed Warcraft-inspired RTS game Stormgate will be leaving early access in version 0.6. Now, I may have only gotten a B in my maths A-level, but that's less than 1.0, something others have pointed out, too.

As reported by our friends over at PC Gamer, Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios is going to be launching the game's single-player campaign on August 5, 2025, and leaving Steam early access. Traditionally, the launch version of a game is labeled 1.0 or higher, due to day-one patches and last-minute hotfixes.

"Players have told us that calling our exit from early access '0.6' may have been well-meant, but it didn't properly convey that Stormgate's foundational content is complete and ready for players to enjoy," Frost Giant writes in a Steam post. "They said it was confusing, and we respect that feedback."

To avoid this confusion going forward, Stormgate will "drop the numbered system and instead stick with our release codenames inspired by RTS units, which we still use internally to this day. We think they’re fun, and we want to continue sharing these with our community—some are obscure and we enjoy the community discussion they spark."

Honestly, this sounds even more confusing to me, especially since two of the four core pillars of the game the devs outlined previously – campaign, co-op, competitive, and custom games – still aren't ready. This launch will just contain a campaign and 1v1 mode.

"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 developers write. If you ask me, 1.0 is far from arbitrary, it shows a customer that they're getting a full and complete game.

Is Mammoth further along the development pipeline than Necrolyte? I'd assume so, because mammoths are big, but Necrolyte is actually the upcoming patch. The numbers work, but I'm not sure if this does for new players who haven't been here since it first launched last year.

In the meantime, check out our list of the best RTS games you can play right now. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth 2 isn't on there, but hey, no list is perfect.

A new Game of Thrones real-time strategy game has been revealed during the Summer Game Fest 2025 live show, and it's launching next year.

This article contains spoilers for Game of Thrones.

Titled Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, the game is planned to launch on PC at some unspecified point in 2026.

This was a purely cinematic trailer, so unfortunately we've not seen any actual gameplay yet, but hey, the cinematics sure look neat so far.

Just in case there was any confusion, this isn't the same Game of Thrones game as the action-adventure RPG that was revealed at The Game Awards last year. That one, titled Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, seemed like a bit of an odd one right from the get-go, as a spin-off to a season that had aired a decade prior. It since launched on Steam to mixed reviews after a rather underwhelming Steam Next Fest demo in February.

War for Westeros, on the other hand, is described as a "premium" strategy game in a press release, allowing players to "take command of one of the Great Houses – or the Night King himself – setting out to conquer the Seven Kingdoms solo, or in exciting and challenging free-for-all multiplayer."

It also mentions being able to "rewrite the fate of the realm," which certainly sounds intriguing, especially since it baits out Jon Snow dying instead of the Night King, and then rising to join his ranks. That "rewrite" bit also comes with a dragon being plucked from the sky by a massive ballista, which certainly reads to me like a pretty punchy comment on Daenerys' full-fledged heel turn towards the end of the final series. I'll let you decide exactly what that comment is trying to say, however, for yourself.

Be sure to check out our Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule to keep up with all the other new game announcements.

The worst thing about the Ghost Keeper demo? The fact that it's a demo. I've been suffering with a bit of empty nest syndrome since completing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and instead of using the opportunity to throw myself back into Hades 2 while I wait for my next hyperfixation, I got myself super into a game that doesn't even have a release date.

But that's just it. The new Steam demo is a short and sweet taster of the creepy mayhem yet to come in Quest Craft's upcoming new game, providing just enough of an introduction to Ghost Keeper's RTS and management systems to get you hooked. It certainly worked for me, and I'll likely be replaying the demo over and over again just to see how many kooky ways I can kill off or scare off those foolish mortals.

Cunning plan

My first mission in Ghost Keeper is simple: free Phineas the Mad, a trapped poltergeist stuck in a broken elevator. This first level takes place in Phineas' mansion, though sadly, he is rather dead. That means there's plenty of humans simply walking about his former home, and it's my job as Ghost Keeper to help the phantoms regain control of their haunt.

The demo is essentially a long tutorial. I'm quickly introduced to the basics: I have two out of three ghosts currently available to summon and recall as needed, and can place them in any room in the three-storey mansion. Each ghost has its own requisite powers, and it's through harnessing each one's skillset that I'm able to manipulate the wandering mortals to do my bidding – including setting Phineas free.

Night Blade, the assassin, excels at flickering lights, stalking mortals in the shadows, and locking all doors in a room to trap his prey inside. Meanwhile, William has a bit more offense utility. He can set mortals ablaze with Wild Fire, cause household objects to malfunction, and draw unsuspecting mortals to his location using a Whisper skill.

Each of these actions costs some ghost energy, with each ghost starting with 100 energy points, and some of them increase their visibility. That makes it a bit of a give and take situation, as if a ghost's visibility meter maxes out or they use all their energy points, they are rendered unusable – or worse, vacuumed up by a member of the ghost-hunting Brotherhood. See what I mean by reverse Ghostbusters? I'll get to those guys in just a moment.

Despite how the first part of the Ghost Keeper demo is largely about freeing Phineas, the real fun begins once I do so. Now, I have access to all three spirits, and can finally amp up the hauntings! However, freeing Phineas causes enough spooky occurrences that the mortal residents of his once-glorious mansion have called upon the Brotherhood to help rid them of their paranormal predicament.

Mischief management

As mentioned earlier, the Brotherhood patrol the house as wandering spirit hunters. They are a lot harder to scare than regular mortals – their fear meter has 300 charges, whereas the household inhabitants have 120 apiece – but it can be done. I now have full rein of the house, the ghosts, and all their skills, meaning it's time to scare or slay the night away.

Scaring mortals using Night Blade's haunting skills causes their purple fear meter to fill up, shown beneath their portraits along the top right-hand corner of the screen. Fill it all the way, and the mortal runs screaming from the house to escape. Alternatively, I can chip away at their green health bars to kill them off instead – and this turns out to be my favorite way to handle things.

Call me sadistic, but there's a smug satisfaction in using a combination of ghosts to achieve creative death situations. Taking advantage of the pause button to do so, I manage to catch two of the three mortal residents in the dining room, trap them there with Night Blade, and immolate them with William.

I also throw out a few other spooky tricks and treats to increase the level of haunting (charted by the amount of green ectoplasm spattered across a given room) like making a table levitate or bursting a nearby pipe. Then, when everyone is nice and terrified (or on fire), I send Phineas in to perform an Ectoplasmic Explosion and deal some extra damage.

Sure, it's only May, but I'm glad Ghost Keeper brings Halloween early with this nifty little demo. I might have run into a couple of bugs, but if I did, I didn't notice them – except for the one time I was unable to summon Phineas, despite him having zero visibility and 87 ghost energy, forcing me to restart the whole level from scratch.

I wasn't mad about it, though. It just gave me another opportunity to think outside the pine box and come up with mischievous new ways to achieve the same goal. And if that's not the whole point of an RTS game, I don't know what is.

Check out some of the best free Steam games for more credit card-free experiences just waiting to be downloaded

Almost 15 years since the last new entry in the series, it sounds like Nexon could end up being the company behind the StarCraft revival real-time strategy fans have been begging for.

Last month, it was reported that four game companies – Nexon, Krafton, Netmarble, and NCSoft – were all competing in an attempt to secure global publishing rights and work on new games in the StarCraft series.

A machine-translated article from Asia Today claimed that each company was putting forward different ideas for what they could do with the series, with some apparently even pitching these suggestions to Blizzard in person.

Now, it's been reported that this battle is seemingly over. A new report from Korean news outlet MTN (which we've machine translated, but it's also been partially translated by South Korean news account @KoreaXboxnews) states that Nexon (which developed The First Descendant and more recently published The First Berserker: Khazan) has been chosen as Blizzard's "preferred bidder," entering into "main negotiations" with the company.

It's not currently clear what kind of new game (or games) StarCraft could see under Nexon. It was previously very vaguely said that the company had suggested some kind of unique way to use the IP, which could mean a whole lot of things. If it's to be believed, and plans haven't changed, it does seem to suggest that it wouldn't simply tread the same ground as previous entries in the RTS series.

Curiously, the same new report claims that, alongside its StarCraft-shaped win, Nexon has also bagged distribution rights for an upcoming mobile Overwatch game in Japan and Korea.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier reported on the apparent development of an Overwatch mobile game in his book about Blizzard which was published last year, so this isn't the first we've heard of a release like this, although MTN now says that it's thought to be a MOBA title.

Be sure to take all of this with a pinch of salt for the time being, anyway, as none of this has been publicly confirmed. StarCraft fans are long overdue a win, though, so here's hoping that on the back of whispers about a StarCraft shooter, the series might finally get the attention it deserves.

In the meantime, be sure to check out the best strategy games you can play now.

Almost 15 years since the series' last totally new game, some form of StarCraft revival could apparently be in the pipeline as it's reported that four companies are in competition to secure the rights to work on new games in the series.

A machine-translated report from AsiaToday (which has also been shared and partially translated by South Korean news account @KoreaXboxNews on Twitter) claims that Nexon, Krafton, Netmarble, and NCSoft are all competing to try and secure global publishing rights for StarCraft, with some apparently having travelled to visit Blizzard in person with their pitches.

Furthermore, it's reported that each company is suggesting different things for the series, with Netmarble apparently proposing the idea of bringing the franchise to mobile platforms in some way, Krafton reportedly wanting to develop a new game, and Nexon putting forward some sort of unique idea to use the IP. The report also appears to suggest that NCSoft could develop an RPG of some sort.

It should go without saying, but this should definitely be taken with a pinch of salt while it remains unconfirmed. Just last year, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier claimed that at the time of him writing his book about Blizzard (titled Play Nice), a new StarCraft shooter was in development at the company. Hype levels grew when, not long after this comment, a job advert confirmed that Blizzard was working on an unannounced "upcoming open-world shooter game."

StarCraft fans have been burned before, however – just think of StarCraft: Ghost, which was announced all the way back in 2002 before it sadly lived up to its name, got indefinitely postponed in 2006, and then later canceled altogether. Hopefully, whatever is reportedly going on behind the scenes at Blizzard today ultimately leads to something new – even the series' latest release, the remaster of the first game, will be eight years old this August.

StarCraft 2 veteran would want a sequel to go open world, or just "try something radically new."

For me, sometimes RTS games can feel a bit too sprawling, and end up intimidating as a result. Grit and Valor – 1949 manages to judge this well, presenting each skirmish as a small and easy to navigate grid, across a board game-like map with branching paths allowing me to judge which encounter I want to tackle next. This is a really nicely presented roguelike RTS where each run empowers me to come back with a new strategy and, so far in the Steam Next Fest demo, enjoy each new attempt.

From Milky Tea Studios (and published by Megabit Publishing), Grit and Valor – 1949 is set, believe it or not, in the year 1949. This alternate history World War 2 has seen the conflict continue and not go well for the Allies, with the British Isles now taken over by the Evil Axis forces. The advent of dieselpunk technology, specifically in the form of mechs and other superweapons, have altered the conflict. Operating from a Resistance HQ base off the coast of Scotland, it's your job to lead a Mech Squadron to deliver an EMP payload to the heart of the Axis' forces and put WW2 history back on track.

Mech your maker

Which means your squad needs to go from tile to tile on a war map, making it through various objectives on each map while upgrading themselves, all while trying to ensure your mechs aren't too damaged to continue and – vitally – that the EMP-housing command vehicle is protected. Each objective revolves around waves of enemies appearing gradually onto each bite-sized map. Able to come from all directions, you must quickly reposition your mechs to best tackle the next group. A weapon triangle determines strengths and weaknesses, and things like high ground and cover can help in a pinch as well.

Between each wave, a crate appears on the map which you can scoop up, though this may potentially put your command vehicle in the path of danger if you've not thought through the movement carefully. Popping it open reveals a choice between (often) three possible upgrade cards that power up your mechs, giving their attacks the chance to apply debuffs, faster movement, or even a bit more health. Some of these upgrades can even synergize together. One mech might be able to Mark targets with attacks, while another might then deal extra damage to enemies with that status.

But it's not just simple wave clearing. Extra objectives can also be completed – ranging from the likes of protecting civilian areas to capturing towers – which give extra currency for upgrades. Aiming to tackle tougher battle tiles, or going for choice-based events, will affect your ability to improve as well. On failure, you're booted back to the beginning to try again. Collected resources can be spent to upgrade mechs with specialist gear, and blueprints traded into unlock new mechs entirely. As well as opening up new facilities at the base, you can also spend to make the path ahead a little easier – paying to introduce cover into the British Isles map made a huge difference.

Real-time, the action is slick, and so far I've enjoyed getting to grips with the mechs on offer, trying to balance mobile fast-attacking units with some slower, heavier hitters. This is one of those roguelikes where you definitely need to get quite a few runs under your belt not just to get comfortable with the rhythm of play, but also to earn crucial unlocks for that pleasing loop of getting genuinely stronger with each attempt. Delightfully moreish, this is a fun and snappy RTS take on roguelikes that turns what can be an intimidating genre into a lovely little snack. With the British Isles the only map in the demo, I'm looking forwards to seeing how the likes of Scandinavia, Western Europe, and New Germany will evolve the loop.

Grit and Valor – 1949 is coming to PC on March 26, 2025, and to PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch consoles in the Summer, so there's not long to wait until setting out on another mech expedition.

Want more battles? Check out our best strategy games list!

Back in 2020, alongside the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, EA released a portion of the source code for Red Alert and the original game. Now, five years later, that code has been "fully recovered" and made public alongside the source code for Renegade and Generals.

"Over the past year I have been working alongside the amazing C&C stakeholders here at EA to restore the Perforce source code archives for the C&C games back to buildable states, which now provides us with the ability to patch these classic games in a deeper way going forward," community veteran Luke "CCHyper" Feenan, who also worked with EA on the release of the Remastered Collection, says in today's announcement. "As a long time modder, it was amazing to finally get a chance to deep dive into the source code for these games and see how they work!"

The full source code for all four games is now available on the EA GitHub page. Feenan notes that "for those of you in the community who know me, you will be familiar with my strong advocacy for video game preservation and my support for the video game open-source community." Indeed, the release of code like this is perhaps the best gesture a major publisher like EA can make toward game preservation.

Remasters - like the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection itself - can help keep a game available to modern audiences, but technology is going to keep marching on, and someday the official versions C&C will almost certainly be left behind again. The release of source code like this gives the community incredible options to keep these games in working shape for years to come.

But game preservation is also about more than just making sure everyday gamers can keep playing old classics. It's also about saving the history of how these games came to be. One of the big efforts of the Video Game History Foundation is preserving "source" - not just code, but the art and other assets used in a game's creation. Source code often offers some of the greatest insights available on a game's development, and it's equally valuable to modders and historians.

For most publishers, the idea of "preservation" starts and ends with reselling old games back to you, which is why I'm so happy to see EA go the extra mile with Command & Conquer here. (If only it'd take that same step with The Sims.) Here's hoping more publishers follow that lead.

Of course, the most immediate benefit of having source available is for modders, and there's more news on the modding front, too. EA is also enabling Steam Workshop support for Renegade, Generals, Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3, and Tiberian Twilight, allowing you to easily download custom maps. The Mission Editor and World Builder tools have also been updated to let modders directly upload their creations to the Workshop.

Command & Conquer remains a mainstay among the best RTS games.

RTS games have been around for a long time, but industry veteran Dave Pottinger whose resume includes games like Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, and Halo Wars, believes the genre is stagnating.

Pottinger is working on a new game, Project Citadel, with Last Keep Games, and with the pedigree he has, it'll be interesting to see if he does make something that keeps the genre fresh. Everyone at Last Keep Games plays something together once a week, and recently that's been Microsoft's Age of Mythology remake.

"It was a big nostalgia trip to go back… it was heartwarming to go back and see those [missions] again and see how universal and popular that strategy gameplay is," he says in an interview with VideoGamer. "I think it reinforced our decisions to innovate with Project Citadel."

He goes on to say: "It hasn’t changed much. You know, you’re still playing the same game we’re playing 20 years ago and looking at some of these new games—Stormgate and others like that—and they’re still really largely based on that formula. It works, it’s an old, golden set of rules, because they were good back then and they’re still good now, and it’s nice to see that stuff still works but at the same time I want to do something new, we want to do something new."

It's not always easy to innovate, though. "There were some times on the Age franchise where we flew a little too close to the sun," he explains. "We had to pull back and take some very innovative things out of the game. I'm talking particularly about formation-based combat in Age of Empires 3. Hell, we demoed that at E3, and took that out of the game because we were afraid it was going to alienate too many of the existing Age fans."

My favorite RTS of all-time is The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2, and I'd still play it to this day if my laptop had a disc drive. It feels like a timeless game, but maybe that is because the formula of the genre hasn't changed that much.

While you're here, check out our list of the best strategy games you can play right now.

Kingmakers debuted to the world with an absolutely wild reveal trailer that seems to have cemented the game's destiny as an inescapable viral hit. It's an action-strategy game where you play as a time-traveling commander who can bring all sorts of modern weapons back to the medieval world, and the devs have just upped the ante by showing off some genuinely incredible looking destruction tech.

"With Kingmakers, we're obsessed with making everything interactable," creative director Ian Fisch says on Twitter, sharing a clip of a car crashing headlong into a wooden building. "If you drive a car full speed into a medieval tavern, well...." To be honest, I think an actual car would be a little worse for wear after careening headlong into a bunch of oak longs, but damn if the way that building crumbles doesn't look incredibly satisfying.

That clip originates from a trailer released last week, confirming that Kingmakers is due to hit early access in the first quarter of 2025. The full trailer, which you can see below, also shows off numerous other examples of the destruction tech. We see a grenade launcher fell a castle arch, cutting off a gaggle of enemy soldiers, an RPG blow a hole in a fortified wall, and a floor destroyed to offer a better vantage point on the enemies sitting below.

Once upon a time, fully destructible environments felt like they'd be the final frontier of video game technology, but these days it's mostly indie games with wild concepts like Kingmakers that are keeping the dream of destruction alive. Here's hoping Kingmakers turns out well, because if it's half as fun as it looks we could be in for something special.

These are the best strategy games out there today.

Blizzard recently released Warcraft 2: Remastered, though not without some controversy, as the original version of the game is sadly about to be delisted from DRM-free storefront GOG. It seems Blizzard wants to make sure this new version of one of the best strategy games ever made is worth investing in, however, as the studio has just released Warcraft 2's "first balance changes in 24 years."

I put "in 24 years" in quotes because I can't independently verify exactly when the last patch went live - PC game updates in the '90s were not nearly as well documented as they are today - but the word of Blizzard's Adam Fletcher on Bluesky is probably enough to trust. At a minimum, this is certainly the first balance patch to hit the game since it was succeeded by Warcraft 3 in 2002.

So what's in this balance patch? Well, you can read the full patch notes for yourself if you want all the details, but basically it's a bunch of damage and power value tweaks for various units. Most notably, Bloodlust spell for the Horde's Ogre Mage unit has been nerfed, decreasing its duration, increasing its mana cost, and making sure that the double damage effect it bestows on allied units applies after armor reduction - not before.

Bloodlust has long been considered the best spell in Warcraft 2, and the power it gives the Ogre Mage means that Horde has always been seen as the better of the two factions, such that competitive players usually go for the Orcs. This particular change has been a long, long time coming. "Bloodlust FINALLY NERFED after 29 years," as one Reddit user puts it. Another says they've been waiting for this "since primary school!"

World of Warcraft devs used to joke about the MMO making $1 million per month - just months before it smashed through $15 million in monthly revenue.

Just weeks after the surprise launch of remasters for Warcraft 1 and 2, it's been confirmed that the originals are going to be delisted from GOG this month, but the storefront is committed to preserving them for those who buy the RTS classics before then.

Last month, digital game storefront GOG unveiled its Game Preservation Program – a new effort to build a collection of  "classic games that GOG has improved, with a commitment of our own resources to ensure their compatibility with modern systems and make them as enjoyable to play as possible." With promises of the games in the program being "the best and most complete" versions possible, complete with extra quality-of-life improvements and a commitment to making them work "on current and future popular PC configurations," it's a huge win for game preservation, but apparently it's not totally perfect. Warcraft 1 and 2 are both part of this program, but they won't be available for purchase from December 13.

In a new blog post, GOG describes this as "heartbreaking news," and says, "even with our best efforts and dedication to game preservation, sometimes things don’t go as we'd hoped." 

However, while it won't be able to sell the RTS games for much longer, it's updated its Game Preservation Program policy to make an additional promise, both to Warcraft 1 and 2, and any other games included in the program. "Going forward, even if a game is no longer available for sale on GOG, as part of the GOG Preservation Program, it will continue to be maintained and updated by us, ensuring it remains compatible with modern and future systems," it says.

Because of the offline drivers that come with GOG games, delisting them won't make them inaccessible for anyone who's already bought them. The storefront is even making them more affordable for anyone who's yet to grab them, with a $2/£1.50 discount code ('MakeWarcraftLiveForever'), which can be used once per user. 

As PC Gamer writes, the two RTS games are also available to buy from Battle.net, and it's not clear if they're also going to be delisted from there. Either way, they differ from the GOG versions, which offer some improvements including "small DOSBox tweaks to improve performance and compatibility" of Warcraft 1, for example. Needless to say, now's the time to add them to your library if you haven't already.

The same US Copyright Office decision that struck down a major game preservation effort also quietly reversed a historic DMCA win for accessibility advocates.

It's taken 14 years, but an intrepid StarCraft 2 player has finally figured out a way to survive a mission that's supposed to kill you, even if their solution locks both enemies and allies alike into a never-ending stalemate. 

The mission in question is In Utter Darkness, which tasks players with killing a set amount of enemies before their Protoss units are inevitably overrun and go out in a blaze of glory. Over the years, real-time strategy geniuses have tried again and again to challenge fate and be truly victorious, but they've never found a way to survive the ceaseless onslaught of enemies, until now. As highlighted on ResetEra, YouTube content creator Davey Gunface has found a way for the Protoss to live forever. 

As you'd expect, achieving this isn't easy, and Davey Gunface has shared a 39-minute video explaining exactly how it's done if you want to try replicating it. The basics of it, however, involve clever manipulation of the enemy AI, including tricking them into going down certain paths where they'll be in vulnerable positions.

The thing that really turns the tide of the battle, however, comes in the final wave of ally reinforcements, with Artanis arriving in the Shield of Aiur. Davey Gunface explains that this mothership started as a "meta-defining badass" and transitioned to "utter meme" status, and potentially "one of the worst units in the entire game," but it certainly proves its worth here. By combining two moves – Vortex, which draws nearby units into a black hole, and Mass Recall, which can recall units – Davey Gunface crams about 24 Templar into a small, but all-important crevice on the side of a cliff, where they can't be reached by ground units. These Templars can morph into Archons, and 12 of those can easily dispatch the waves of air enemies that'd usually be lethal, and spell the end of the battle. 

Davey Gunface continues to lure enemies to their deaths by enticing them to this spot, and while the player still loses units for a while, it eventually gets to a point where there are too many ground enemies on the field for anything else to spawn. This brings the enemies to a standstill – they can't get to the Protoss, who're tucked away safely in their hidey-hole. However, things can be taken even further – it's possible to kill everything that isn't an Overseer just by staying cloaked. The Overseers (which can't actually do any damage) then retreat to out-of-bounds edges of the map, which Davey Gunface calls "a very realistic win condition." 

Sure, you won't get a victory screen from doing this unlike if you just accept your fate, but this is the best possible outcome for the Protoss in this mission. They'll be stuck in the same spot on a map until the end of time, but at least they're still alive and kicking, right?

For more games like StarCraft 2, be sure to check out our roundups of the best RTS games and best PC games.

Warcraft 3: Reforged was supposed to get a second chance earlier this week with the launch of version 2.0 – a major patch that seemingly had the opportunity to revitalize the real-time strategy remaster that was heavily criticized when it launched in 2020. However, a major bug might have ended up frustrating original Warcraft 3 fans about its existence even more. 

As highlighted across Reddit and the Blizzard Forums, many players of the classic game reported that after the release of Reforged 2.0, they could no longer access the 2002 version. "Multiple people, including myself, being hit with a menu saying 'This account does not have a valid Warcraft 3 License. Click here to purchase one' and the link takes you to the page to buy Warcraft 3 Reforged," one writes. 

Others shared similar tales, with one saying that "the CD [keys] of WC3 [Reign of Chaos] and [The Frozen Throne] have been on my account since forever," and another noting that they've "owned the original game for almost 20 years," and never needed to pay for Reforged to continue playing it with its classic visuals. "Surely this is a bug, and not Blizzard's way of telling me that I'm no longer able to do so, right?" they question.

Thankfully, they're exactly right, as Blizzard acknowledged the problem on Twitter before long: "Our Warcraft 3 European servers are running into some login issues. We're also aware of players who have original Warcraft and are unable to log in," it explains. "We're working on a fix for these issues."

Perhaps it's because launching the original Warcraft 3 requires the Reforged client, allowing a problem to seemingly spread from the new version to the old one, but regardless, it mercifully seems that the situation has since improved, with some now saying that it's been fixed and they can "play without any problems." Either way, even temporarily making an enemy of the classic fans isn't exactly a great start for Reforged 2.0 – here's hoping that that's the end of its problems.

RTS classics Warcraft and Warcraft 2 surprise drop remasters with "brand new, hand-drawn visuals" that you can swap in and out in real-time.

Blizzard has surprise-dropped remasters for Warcraft and Warcraft 2.

We had some inclination that 1995's Warcraft 2 was getting a remaster when it leaked last week, but the reveal of Warcraft 1: Remastered is a total surprise. Blizzard revealed both titles in a new trailer, showing off stark visual improvements from the original games. "These remasters feature brand new, hand-drawn visuals that capture the original art style from each game," said Warcraft manager Brad Chan during Blizzard's 30th anniversary livestream.

It's hard to say how the visual improvements will hold up in actual gameplay, but judging from the footage shown in the trailer, they look solid. I'll always have a fondness for the original look, which has such endearing grit, and for my money the new look is decidedly more cartoony, but I suspect newcomers may prefer the updated version.

Here's the good news. Chan also confirmed you'll be able to swap out the original graphics with the remastered versions, and vice-versa, at any point "in real time."

Here are some quick side-by-sides of the old, pixel-y versions next to their 2024 counterparts for comparison:

The remasters are up for sale individually today, with Warcraft 1 Remastered going for $9.99 and Warcraft 2 Remastered costing $14.99. They're also available as part of the $39.99 Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest, which includes both remasters as well as Warcraft 3: Reforged, which just got its massive 2.0 update aimed at giving the maligned four-year-old remaster a new lease on life.

It's never a bad time to think your way through our list of the best strategy games.

Four years after the maligned launch of Warcraft 3: Reforged, a remaster of the original 2002 real-time strategy game, Reforged is getting a second chance with its 2.0 launch today, November 13.

When Warcraft 3: Reforged first came to our screens in 2020, it was quickly criticized for its technical issues and failure to live up to the old promotional material for the supposed upgrade. It was so bad, Blizzard apologized for it and even changed its refund policy. Now, it has a chance for redemption.

Available now, Warcraft 3: Reforged has progressed to version 2.0. This update comes with new features such as the ability to customize the visuals. You can play with the remastered Reforged graphics or go back to the visual experience of the classic game. There's also a remastered classic game style which should hopefully keep the feel of the original while upgrading the resolution for more modern systems.

One of my favorite things to do when playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection was just swapping between graphical styles mid-mission, so hopefully you're able to just press one button press for Reforged, too.

Once you've tried out all three styles for Reforged, you can customize your experience even further by mixing and matching elements for your UI. For example, you could have Reforged game scenes, classic portraits, and remastered classic icons.

Alongside a second chance for Reforged, Warcraft 2: Tides of War and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans are getting some TLC. Part of this information was leaked last week, November 6, when files for Warcraft 2 Remastered were found, and now we have final confirmation that it's real and also available right now. Hopefully, it doesn't make the same mistakes Warcraft 3: Reforged did.

If you'd rather play something new instead of returning to familiar ground, check out our list of the best strategy games available right now. 

Many consider StarCraft 2 one of, if not the best, real-time strategy games, but one of the devs who worked on it doesn't want players to assume it can never be topped - so much so that he's working on a competitor. 

Ex-StarCraft 2 multiplayer lead David Kim isn't at Blizzard anymore – he's instead senior game director for all-new RTS game Battle Aces, which is being developed by Uncapped Games. Battle Aces was first unveiled during Summer Game Fest in June, where it was sold as an "RTS game for everyone" and accessible to newcomers to the genre, as well as good fun for any hardened veterans. This is a point Kim has reiterated in a recent interview with PC Gamer. He notes that around the time Blizzard began development on StarCraft 2's 2013 Heart of the Swarm expansion, he began considering why "we have to continue to put so much pressure on RTS players to have to master these basic, I guess, execution elements before they can experience the core fun?"

Ultimately, after prototyping an RTS at Blizzard that ended up being canceled, Kim ended up at Uncapped Games, where he's still working on the genre. As for why that's the case, it boils down to a lot of love for real-time strategy and the desire to prove the genre can keep improving. "For me it's very personal, because [real-time strategy] is my favorite genre of all time, and I just can't accept the fact that players, or I guess developers even, take the stance of 'the end-all peak of RTS is StarCraft 2 and nothing can ever be better than StarCraft,'" he explains. 

At GamesRadar+, we recently got hands on with Battle Aces, with Andrew Brown noting that "the simplicity of Battle Aces won me over," even if "the game in its current state is still very awkward to learn for anyone who's coming from outside an RTS background." The game's latest beta phase kicks off today, which should give more players the chance to give it a go.

For more games like StarCraft and Battle Aces, be sure to check out our roundup of the best RTS games.

Dataminers have uncovered evidence that Warcraft 2: Remastered is on the way, promising a fresh coat of paint on an RTS classic. But given Blizzard's up and down history with remasters in recent years - particularly when it comes to Warcraft - it's tough to know what to expect.

Warcraft fansite Wowhead has posted images of logos and key art for Warcraft 2: Remastered which appear to have originated on Blizzard's own Battle.net, tied to an "internal alpha" for the game. No other info has been uncovered, but given the timing, it's possible we'll see an official announcement during the Warcraft 30th anniversary broadcast set to run on November 13.

Blizzard previously released Warcraft 3: Reforged back in 2020. The remaster launched to a universally negative response, with players noting a raft of technical issues and its failure to measure up to years-old promotional material for the upgrade. Blizzard directly apologized for the launch shortly afterward - a process we'd see repeated in other high-profile remasters like Rockstar's GTA Trilogy.

But while the GTA Trilogy eventually redeemed itself - to an extent - with patches and updates, Warcraft 3: Reforged never managed the same, and it's still widely maligned by fans of the RTS series. Blizzard would eventually get a little taste of remaster redemption, however, with the launch of Diablo 2: Resurrected, which remains widely regarded as an excellent way to revisit the ARPG. Here's hoping that, if Warcraft 2: Remastered turns out to be real, it learns the right lessons from Blizzard's previous upgrades.

BlizzCon is canceled again, and Blizzard hasn't really explained why - but says it's coming back "in future years."

In the years since StarCraft launched, we've had one real-time strategy after another trying to crack the genre open for new audiences. But there's been very little attempt made to wrest away those still in Blizzard's Zerg-y clutches, meaning nothing has really challenged StarCraft's position as top dog in the genre. But if StarCraft remains a gourmet banquet, new RTS Battle Aces offers the same nourishment for your noggin in a bitesize offering.

Battle Aces marks the debut of Uncapped Games, a studio founded by former Blizzard devs, but what sets it apart from past projects is the way it slims down traditionally elaborate economic and macro-level decision-making in favor of streamlined combat. Despite that step toward simplicity, the thrill of maneuvering giant armies into battle has not been diluted – and after playing for myself, I'm mostly sold on the studio's rapidfire approach toward shaking up the RTS genre.

Construct additional crabs

When it comes to playing even RTS games, I've always struggled with head-to-head multiplayer. Being outclassed in a match – and I often am – is like being slowly strangled, and by the time you realize there are keyboard-clacking hands around your neck, it's too late to do anything about it. The mistakes you made leading up to that point are inscrutable in comparison to other genres, which often come down to "shoot faster" or "dodge better", as it can be hard to trace defeat back to subtler errors like building a new base too soon (or too late) 10 minutes ago.

Battle Aces sidesteps this by squashing the process into something that resembles the later throes of an RTS match, where combat takes precedence over bigger picture planning. You start with a single hub building where all of your recruiting takes place, and the workers gathering your resources are all automated. Expanding with a new base is done at the push of a button – automated resource-gathering hubs are constructed automatically at preset points on the map – and battle-ready units appear instantly when bought. Your job is to ensure you're spending those free-flowing resources correctly, building up an army whilst investing to make sure income can keep up with the demand for pricier fighters later on.

As a result, combat is quick to the point where matches can last just a few short minutes. I certainly found that to be the case in my first few games: growing your economy and military in-step has been massively simplified, but it remains a tightrope that is brutally unforgiving to fall from. In some matches I'd watch as my horde of chaff crab-robots were decimated by bigger crab-robots because I hadn't bought the hub's Foundry to unlock tougher units early enough. In another, trying to correct that mistake meant overstepping and failing to have a big enough army to protect my sprawl of industry. Finding the sweet spot is tough, but the reward for doing so is getting to see your seething blob of robots, missile-spewing Ballista, and aerial support chew through your opponents' own mass before setting upon their undefended bases.

Balancing an army-wide unit composition is just as tough – flying units, for example, decimate a lot of ground units despite being easily wiped out by anti-air – but this creates room to reactively outplay your opponent. However, when it comes to what you're fielding, Battle Aces' biggest twist is that there are no race-based factions to choose between. Instead, you pre-build your own deck of individual units to use, which means you get a little bit more control over "your" faction's strengths and weaknesses throughout the game. I found myself losing a lot of matches until I swapped my starting robots – which were individually weaker but far cheaper, meant for horde tactics – for beefier crab mechs, but I'd be interested in seeing how this approach shapes out. I think it'll result in chaos where creativity thrives, or a rigid meta caused by being able to pick-and-mix every unit, but only time will tell.

As someone who's always preferred the strategic thinking and combat in RTS games over high-intensity button-mashing, the simplicity of Battle Aces won me over. But as it stands, the game in its current state is still very awkward to learn for anyone who's coming from outside an RTS background. Its tutorials cover the absolute basics of moving and recruiting units, but I wrapped these up in a few minutes without getting into equally crucial areas like resource management. As a result, I had to go into my first games still essentially flying blind; which led to a series of lost matches that felt like one punch after another to my morale. Onboarding new players remains the genre's toughest nut to crack – and I'm not expecting Battle Aces to magically solve this – but I have come to expect a little more from any game entering the scene nowadays.

Considering Battle Aces is still in beta testing right now, I'm hoping better onboarding is something Uncapped Games plans to tick off its to-do list in time. But I think, partly, even this speaks to what Battle Aces is offering: an adrenaline shot for the genre's existing diehards. And that's fine! Better than fine, even – it pulls that approach off in a way I've never seen before, and I can see myself diving back into Battle Aces' quickfire matches without the hesitation I experienced in similar games. But just as easily, with the right onboarding, I can see Battle Aces' measured straightforwardness being the gateway to finally bringing in friends who have long been allergic to games that use words like "economics" and "micromanagement".

On my end, I wrapped up my hands-on feeling very keen to see how Battle Aces pans out in the run-up to launch. Though, admittedly, any game with mecha-crustaceans is going to get my vote.

Whether you prefer RTS or turn-based titles, here are the best strategy games to check out.

The developer behind a real-time strategy game about ants has been talking up how a maxed-out PC compares to the PS5 Pro. While you might spend three to five times more on the former than the latter, the current state of tech means you're unlikely to get a game that looks three to five times better on a PC than it would on a PS5 Pro.

Speaking to WCCFTech, Empire of the Ants game director Renaud Charpentier takes a question over how much of an improvement there is between the PS5 and PS5 Pro versions of the game and how the latter fares against a maxed-out PC game.

"As said and as presented by Sony, it is expected that most games will double their frame rate on the Pro or improve scene quality if they were already running in 60 on a PS5," he says. "Still, maxed-out PCs are kind of "no limit," so they will, of course, be more powerful, but you can't compare them. A maxed-out PC is going to cost easily three to five times more and consume three to five times more electrical energy.

"But what is interesting and says a lot about the flattening silicon evolution curve is that your game on your monster PC is not going to look or play 3 to 5 times better than on a PS5 Pro console. There is a huge diminishing return now on high-end silicon, and that might have an impact on the life cycle duration of console hardware."

As for the PS5 Pro's price tag, Charpentier isn't sure how expensive it truly is. The developer praises the PS5 and Xbox Series X as "incredible pieces of hardware" and says it was "impossible" to build a PC as powerful on the same budget. But, the inflation we've seen since launch means "comparing the PS5 Pro price with benchmarks and prices of decades ago doesn't seem very relevant."

"The interesting question would be how much it costs in terms of average salary percentage in each region and how much previous top-end consoles cost relative to their time," he says. "I don't know about that, but I remember that in my youth, many consoles were already considered pretty expensive by my parents and my friend's parents."

As for Empire of the Ants itself, the game is a remake of another obscure RTS we got 23 years ago, rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 to deliver visuals photorealistic enough to make the original look further away in age than it already does. Regardless, if you play this one on PS5 Pro, you can rest assured it won't look much worse off than it would on a maxed-out PC.

Here are the best strategy games you can play right now if you want something to pass the time.

With whispers that StarCraft "is not dead" over at Blizzard Entertainment, there are more questions than ever about what could be next for the real-time strategy series, but one StarCraft 2 veteran hopes that whatever a sequel might bring would be something "radically new to advance the genre."

Recent StarCraft rumors came by way of Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who, while speaking to Podcast Unlocked, claimed that while he was writing his new Blizzard-focused book, a StarCraft shooter was in development. Blizzard hasn't confirmed if this is true or not, but speaking to GamesRadar+ in a recent interview, StarCraft 2 production director Tim Morten tells us he'd hope that the next game in the series could spice things up a bit.

"I would hope to see StarCraft 3 try something radically new to advance the genre, like being an open world or introducing game modes that are radically different for accessibility with a greater ability to game with friends," Morten says.

Morten isn't at Blizzard now, it should be noted – he's now the CEO of Frost Giant Studios, which recently released the RTS game Stormgate in early access. Even so, there's no doubt that many fans would want the same thing from a potential fresh sequel – just something that breaks new ground. 

Anyway, if the rumors of a new StarCraft game being in development are true, whether it could actually see the light of day is another matter. Just look at StarCraft: Ghost – it was announced all the way back in 2002, but eventually canceled, tragically living up to its name. For the sake of RTS fans everywhere, hopefully there's something exciting to look forward to here.

Dev behind StarCraft "spiritual successor" Stormgate says the strategy game's mixed reviews are fine, but players shouldn't expect StarCraft devs to make StarCraft quality straight off the bat.

It's been – deep breath, please – 14 years since StarCraft 2 launched. Ouch. Though my brain has finally stopped thinking that 2010 was just a few years ago, this one stings. I was never particularly good at StarCraft – truth be told, online RTS matches stress me out like nothing else – but Wings of Liberty's campaign hooked me from the first mission. It was my stepping stone from playing the likes of Halo Wars and Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 alone, to trying out multiplayer and learning phrases like Zerg rush and APM against my will. 

I have fond (if painful memories) of trying to master all three of StarCraft 2's factions at once, throwing myself into the zerg's trial-by-fire horde playstyle and, once that felt too hard, dropping it to learn Protos' quality over quantity tactics. I never quite clicked with either – it was the safe, reliable Terrans I did best with – but it was the first and only time I've been so driven to compete in a strategy game. 

Even 14 years later, I'm yet to find another RTS that has grabbed me in the same ways StarCraft did. So when it was recently reported that a StarCraft shooter was in the works, my immediate reaction was two-fold: as much as I crave a new story in Blizzard's sci-fi world, I'd much rather be looking at that world from a top-down perspective. But given how much has changed since StarCraft 2 launched, I have to wonder what something like StarCraft 3 would even look like.  

Construct additional pylons

Let's take a look at the broader strategy genre. Since StarCraft 2 launched, we've seen XCOM receive a critically acclaimed reboot and sequel, while Civilization has released two (going on three with Civilization 7) new mainline games. In 2016 Total War moved into fantasy, breaking with its decade and a half of historical dominance to delve into Warhammer. Even Company of Heroes, which of these examples lies closest to StarCraft despite its World War Two setting, has experimented with live service trappings and a more sandbox-style campaign across its last two entries. 

That's all to say that strategy, more so than most genres besides open-world adventures, changes more than most. The landscape that StarCraft 2 dominated is now alien – there's been a massive shift away from traditional RTS games, which I'd define as having a scripted campaign, competitive-minded multiplayer, and skirmish mode options. Now, we tend to see parts of this packaged into completely different games. A good example is Cataclismo, an Early Access game published by Hooded Horse – which, by my measure, keeps its thumb on the genre's pulse better than anyone else. Cataclismo takes traditional single-unit combat and defensive turtling and splices it into a brilliant block-by-block base-builder. You're still creating buildings to recruit units, managing your resource-based economy, and trying to field a well-balanced army. But you're also playing medieval Lego and fighting immeasurable hordes of enemies, things that don't fit within StarCraft's formula so neatly. 

Meanwhile, I can count on one hand the amount of recent studios trying to capture that traditional formula. The big one is Stormgate developer Frost Giant Studios – while our Stormgate review flagged room for improvement, the game is currently in Early Access, and its first major update in September has been well-received by fans. On one hand, it shows there's an appetite for this style of RTS – but even Frost Giant Studios CEO Tim Morten, who was the production director for StarCraft 2, feels Blizzard would have to think big for StarCraft 3. 

"I would hope to see StarCraft 3 try something radically new to advance the genre, like being an open world or introducing game modes that are radically different for accessibility with a greater ability to game with friends," Morten tells GamesRadar+. Though I can't picture an open-world StarCraft game myself, I completely agree with Morten's point – it's hard to imagine a safe follow-up succeeding in today's landscape. 

For all of its strengths, StarCraft could never quite connect with a casual audience, as a lack of onboarding meant that players could only learn how to play through YouTube tutorials and one crushing defeat after another. This is something that developers have become much better at in recent years. Last year's Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, which sticks to that classic RTS formula, did this quite well, as streamlined unit production and less intensive micro-management meant that you could focus more on tougher concepts and the broader strategy of each match. Even grand strategies Crusader Kings 3 and Stellaris have made it to console, which defies the assumption that the genre's toughest games are restricted to nicher PC audiences.

If by some miracle Blizzard decided to greenlight StarCraft 3 – and by all accounts, the studio is dying to get back to its strategic ways – opening the series up to more players feels crucial. Besides the innovation that Morten points to, there's certainly room for StarCraft's larger-than-life campaigns to make a comeback, as very little can match a level propped up by one of the studio's jaw-dropping cinematics. Ultimately, maybe the easiest way to bring back StarCraft really is through a shooter, even if past attempts at doing so haven't worked out. Perhaps the times have indeed changed, and there really aren't as many wrist-cramped fans clamoring for a true follow-up. But as someone who's spent far too long gleefully mismanaging legions of doomed Zerg, Protoss and Terrans, it would be a shame to see Blizzard call it quits on the strategy genre rather than adapt to what it's become. 

Don't let your APM get rusty - check out the best PC games you can play right now.

Stormgate has been anticipated for a while. Announced in 2022 and bolstered with a $2.3 million dollar Kickstarter in 2023, Stormgate has spent the last couple years pitching itself in a simple way: a new real-time strategy game made by some of the people who worked on Warcraft 3 and StarCraft II. As those franchises continue to languish, there's a big gap in the marketplace, and RTS circles have been buzzing about Stormgate regularly since the announcement.

Following its release into Early Access on July 30, I've had the opportunity to complete what exists of the single player campaign while also managing to put some time into the game's online multiplayer. The short is that the game feels a little messy and a little too complicated, and it is attempting to please a lot of different demographics of players without making the game truly appealing to any of them. It's the details of these appeals that matter, though.

I know that most people are thinking about Stormgate in terms of online multiplayer, but I think the storytelling and scene setting provided by the single-player campaign does critical work. The games that it is riffing on have had extremely long lives because they have provided a platform for head-to-head competition. StarCraft II's elegant triangular system of Terrans vs. Zerg vs. Protoss has resonated with players for more than 20 years, and there's an electricity in those legacy Blizzard properties that is obviously difficult to replicate. The place where that work can be done, and where we can learn about these factions and their modes of engagement, is in the campaign.

Familiar territory

Unfortunately, I think that the six missions of campaign that launched with the game's Early Access point to some of the key problems with Stormgate. Over the two and a half hours it took me to work through them, I was introduced to a member of the human Vanguard faction named Amara, whose father was involved in the event that summoned the Infernal Host into conflict with humanity. She's a militaristic badass haunted by the past and willing to do anything to defeat her enemy. That is essentially where her characterization begins and ends, and she's got a couple supporting characters for her to bounce off on in that journey.

The Infernal Host are essentially demons, and their continual invasion has decimated humanity over the past two decades. In the campaign missions that I was able to play, Amara learns about and decides to pursue a powerful mystical artifact that can destroy her enemies…but at what cost?

There is a tension in the campaign because it is fundamentally a story-driven set of missions meant to get us invested in this world. It is undeniable that it is well animated, that the voice acting is strong, and that the cinematics are directed and considered as much as any other top-tier gaming product today. At the same time, the story is so buried in the genre, and so clearly riffing on themes and ideas from StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo, that I began playing a subgame of "what game will the next plot beat come from"? 

I have a huge amount of empathy for the team making this game because they are fundamentally selling a product that is marketed as a Blizzard product being made by a company that is not Blizzard but shares its DNA. They even named their company Frost Giant. So they are stuck trying to deliver something extremely familiar while also being fresh, but I am afraid that a world co-created by Chris Metzen after the heyday of Blizzard just might straight-up not have the juice. I imagine for some people these elements might create some warm and fuzzy feelings of stories played before. For me, they felt like a rerun.

Newly nostalgic

Detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign and the setting of Stormgate is important because many of these same ideas bleed over into the online multiplayer. The game plays as a combination of StarCraft II's unit and base management systems and Warcraft 3's map management demands. In traditional RTS mode, you build little bases, make armies using the resources those bases create, and then try to take beneficial fights as you slowly overwhelm your opponent. The game maps themselves are covered in nodes that might be beneficial to control, like flags that heal you or resource gathering points, and so players have to compete for access and control of those as well.

The demands of these systems are tricky and I do not envy the work that Frost Giant's game designers have had to do for the past several years. They have had to create a game that is legible to newcomers and provides an on-ramp for learning the game, but they also have to create something with enough depth that long-time players of these other franchises might be lured into this new game. 

Much like the campaign and its setting, where it feels like the past has overwhelmed whatever novelty this game might be bringing to these themes, the online multiplayer is a remix of previous Blizzard-adjacent games. The basic operations of the RTS – building bases, armies, upgrading them, getting into combat – are pretty uncomplicated and easy to operate. However, their complexity level is very high, and the campaign currently only exists for the Vanguard faction, meaning that you can only get a narrative "tutorial" for one faction.

It is a fool's errand to try to run through what all three factions (Vanguard, Infernal Host, and Celestial Armada) do in detail. Very broadly, the Vanguard is a human faction that has effective direct damage units that can move around to control the map efficiently. The Infernal Host have either smaller swarm units or bigger, bulkier units, and all of them are powered up when they stay in their own territory – to win as the Host, you have to prioritize making that territory bigger. The Celestial Armada, my chosen faction, have a series of efficiencies and shortcuts that allow them to be mobile in taking new bases and quickly standing up defensive positions, but it comes at the cost of fast and efficient offense. Longtime players of StarCraft might recognize the broad strokes of the Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss here.

To Stormgate's benefit, these factions are not just the factions from this other game, but they do resemble them in many ways, and it takes a bit of gameplay to figure out the key differences in how you are supposed to use the factions and how you are supposed to defend against each of them. A new RTS player might actually have an easier time than a veteran, given that they would not be stuck with these resonances, but I am not sure – the evocation of the other games is so strong that it feels impossible to tell what being totally uncoupled would even look like.

As an Early Access product, Stormgate is a relatively fun experience. I cannot say that the campaign sample I had access to would make me interested in learning more about this world or these characters, given that their stories are so familiar to me already, but others with a higher tolerance or less baggage might feel differently. I'm also willing to see what happens, especially with the expectation that other factions will enter into the campaign in more substantive ways.

I do not think that the Early Access for Stormgate tells its future, especially given that RTS games undergo deep processes of rebalance on a regular basis. Right now, the game is fairly slowly paced and has a very high information bar to play. At the same time, it's fun and genuinely interesting to learn, and it would take me many dozens of games, and probably a few months, to determine something so simple as whether or not it is good or bad. I think that with my limited experience, I can say that it's a complex game, and it doesn't always feel or seem rewarding for all the complexity it demands. Luckily, I think the Early Access period will be a place for development and feedback, and I am looking forward to dipping into the online competitive mode every few weeks to see where the game goes from here.

Stormgate was reviewed in Early Access on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

Stormgate, the new real-time strategy game created by a team of former Warcraft and StarCraft 2 developers, is finally here, but players' reactions to it so far suggest that it's not quite living up to the hype generated by its massive fundraising efforts. 

Developed by Frost Giant Studios, there was never any doubt that Stormgate had got strategy fans' attention, with many showing their support with their wallets. It raised over $2 million on Kickstarter thanks to prospective players' donations, smashing through its initial $100,000 goal, and then the studio went on to seek equity funding – encouraging fans to invest in the studio itself to help support the game. At the time of writing, Frost Giant has been able to secure over $1 million this way from 419 investors. This came after the studio received $34.7 million from other investors, including Riot Games, via Seed and Series A funding.

Needless to say, expectations are high, but Stormgate released in early access on Steam yesterday for previous playtesters, as well as backers and those who bought early access packs, and its reviews aren't exactly fantastic. Right now, after 374 reviews (from people who purchased the game via Steam), 56% are positive, and it's earned itself a 'Mixed' score. While its multiplayer has been praised, some are unhappy with how "slow" the game feels and have criticized the "generic, bland" campaign. 

Of course, it's definitely worth keeping in mind that key phrase – 'early access.' It's not currently been announced when Stormgate's 1.0 version will be released – a FAQ page suggests it won't be for "at least a year, but that's subject to change." On August 13, it'll go free-to-play, allowing everyone to dive in at no extra cost, which will certainly bring with it more feedback. Here's hoping that Frost Giant will be able to act on the constructive criticism to create the RTS that fans want, even if it takes a little more time. 

CEO behind Warcraft and StarCraft vets' new strategy game defends asking players to invest in the studio, even after raising $35 million across fundraising efforts.

"It's not about winning, it's about having fun" is a phrase usually reserved for consoling children who lose every game at their school's Sports Day. But it's also painfully apt when it comes to turtling, a term which refers to building impenetrable defenses in real-time strategy games. It's my favorite tactic, but it's not the most effective – I could watch waves of attackers crash against walls forever, but actually beating your opponent requires leaving home comforts behind to go on the offensive. 

But Cataclismo, the latest title to launch under strategy publisher Hooded Horse's watchful eye, puts an end to that nonsense. An RTS game that feels equal parts Starcraft, Lego, and tower defense, Cataclismo hasn't just stolen my heart – it's built a 50-foot wall around it and dared me to take it back. 

 Castles under the hammer 

In Cataclismo, most of the world has been overrun by Horrors – mutated, shambling beasts that lurk in the ruins of a once-proud civilization. As the last bastion of humanity, it's your job to try and reclaim some of these lands from the Horrors, building up settlements capable of withstanding seemingly endless assaults. 

Each scenario – whether it's a campaign level or Cataclismo's moreish endless mode – revolves around a day-night cycle. By day, the game is more of a base management sim. You'll place drag-and-drop buildings that support your economy – houses for citizens, quarries and sawmills for construction materials, barracks to recruit soldiers – whilst your walls are placed brick by brick. There are occasional probing attacks to weather, but these defenses aren't truly tested until night – when waves of Horrors attack en masse.

When the sun goes down, Cataclismo shifts gears and becomes a full-on RTS tower defense. You're told exactly where Horrors will attack from, but they'll usually pour in from several points at once, and actually stopping them is easier said than done. 

Cataclismo's brick-by-brick building system is more intricate than any other RTS I've played. Stone is used to build walls and towers, while wood is flimsy and best used for stairs and walkways – the equivalent of stacking dirt to reach something in Minecraft. Verticality plays a big part in everything: a 'toughness' meter gives structures more health the higher they're built, which is visually represented by walls changing from shabby cobblestone to gleaming white brick as they get taller. Additionally, certain units like archers gain damage boosts from having a sizable height advantage over their targets, while others – such as artillery units and grenade-chucking Lobbers – work best at just a few meters off the ground. 

As a result, I've had to put a lot of thought into base-building. My first plan, to build a towering single row of stone and whack everyone on top, fell apart when I realized that Horrors could tear through it like paper and it was too thin for soldiers to maneuver on. Since then, I've started doubling up on wall depth, whilst adding stone overhangs at the top so I can cram on Merlons – which give units behind them more range – and stations for archers to light their arrows on fire. Roofs have been built to shelter everyone from rain, improving their accuracy, while windows closer to the ground let my Lobbers and Cannoneers blast Horrors at their optimal range. It's ugly, but effective: imagine if Gondor's structural architecture was handled by a toddler, and you'll have a pretty good picture of my setup. Slowly iterating shabby fences into imposing ramparts has been wildly satisfying though, especially when I get to sit back and watch hundreds of Horrors crash and die against my medieval not-quite masterpiece. 

 On guard

I've always found playing defensively to be far more fun than attacking. In my first foray into strategy, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth 2, I'd spend hours in custom matches with AI, holding the walls of Minas Tirith from waves of orcs and goblins. Some of my fondest memories in the Total War series are winning impossible siege battles – from a few veteran praetorians holding the gates of Rome in the historical side, or rows of Dwarf Thunderers shooting down thousands of zombies in Warhammer's, er, not-so-historical entries. 

Elsewhere, my favorite missions in turn-based games are the ones that give you an objective to defend against overwhelming odds – like that stupidly fun Avenger Defense mission in XCOM 2, or fighting a hopeless battle to hold Garreg Mach monastery in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. 

Why? Perhaps it's more interesting because the stakes are higher: I'm fighting to save something, rather than tear it down. More tangibly, there's also something incredible about watching the attacker's superior numbers dwindle as they're peppered by ranged fire and forced through chokepoints. From a design perspective, these sorts of scenarios certainly push players to be more creative, as you've got to turn to environmental features like terrain and traps to find advantages –  whereas as a besieging army, for example, these are annoying hindrances to overcome. 

Perhaps it's none of these reasons that make me a sucker for security. In another life I may have been a 10th century mason, spending my days stacking bricks and gleefully building the perfect balistraria before dying of plague at the ripe old age of 23. But as even the best strategy games have broadly shifted from tightly-crafted single-player missions to open-ended sandbox campaigns, and nearly every multiplayer mode revolves around smashing your opponent to bits as quickly as possible, I find myself scratching that defensive itch less often. 

It's a relief, then, but Cataclismo has entered my life to tell me that it's right and good to stay in my base forever, to shirk 90% of the map in favor of home comforts. It's not about winning, it's about having fun? That still holds true, sure – but Cataclismo lets me have my base and keep it too.  

Check out our Cataclismo review to see what we think of the Early Access game

With just a couple of minutes left on the clock, I put my plan into action. Having walked me through a couple of different strategies, Battle Aces game director David Kim has taken off the training wheels, letting me loose on the aggressive push-and-pull of his "paradigm-shifting" strategy game.

I'm playing with an army full of Recall units. Relatively weak, slow-moving ground units, their strength comes in the fact that they're both extremely cheap to build and surprisingly mobile. That's because their name refers to their ability to teleport to a nearby base after a brief delay. I've been using them to harry my enemies for this entire match, rushing a group of them into a skirmish before porting back to safety, hopefully taking a couple of resource-gathering workers down and getting out before the cavalry shows up.

While I've been harassing those enemy workers, my own have been largely untouched, and I've now bought enough time to upgrade my base and build a large number of disposable Bomber units. While I continue to poke and prod with my Recalls on one side of the map, I position the fast-moving bombers at the opposite edge. As I finally draw my opponent into a straight-up fight, I run the bombers into their base, wiping out the workers, crippling their economy, and allowing me to roll over them with a reserve squadron of tanks.

All your base are belong to me 

All of this happens inside nine minutes. Kim is a 10-year veteran of StarCraft 2, but in our time together he emphasizes that the months-long learning curve of that iconic RTS is something he's keen to avoid in Battle Aces. Everything is simplified - each player can take just eight units into battle, deciding which of two upgrade trees they might like to rely on. Building and resource management are relegated to just a handful of buttons, a choice that Kim says was made to allow players to keep their eye on the fighting, and facilitate skilled players to have battles on multiple fronts, without having to jump back to micro-manage.

Between that simplicity and Battle Aces' smaller maps, it might seem that it couldn't match the complexity that the RTS community has looked to across the likes of StarCraft and Age of Empires. But Kim is adamant that while this game has been made to act as an alternative to those classics, genre veterans have been effusive in playtests, diving into a deep, interconnecting web of different units to unlock unit counters, new strategies, and the kind of nail-biting finishes that might once have required two players with years of experience in a single game.

Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock

Peculiarly, Battle Aces has enabled that depth by streamlining its armies. Each player can only take eight units into battle, divided along two upgrade paths. As a general rule, Foundry units are slightly beefier ground units, while Starforge units are faster, aerial fighters. At the start of each game, you'll also have access to Core units, which form the basis of your early armies. The Foundry and Starforge can each be upgraded twice, each upgrade granting access to an increasingly powerful unit. A fourth and final unit type adds a further layer of complexity, as you have to pick whether you want to unlock them with your second or third upgrade; pick a second-level upgrade, and you'll have more tools with which to attempt to counter your opponent, but you might lack firepower in the late-game; pick a third-level, end-game option, and you could be swarmed before you get a chance to play your ace.

I say 'late-game', but in reality I'm talking about little more than five or six minutes. Battle Aces fights are extremely fast, but each one is a case of counters and counter-counters. Enemy units are hidden in fog of war, but you'll be able to see what upgrade paths they're looking for, which units they're planning to build, and even exactly where their economy-boosting bases can be found. With each decision they make, you'll be forced to make your own in an attempt to keep pace. Fights were rarely complex, but I still found myself struggling to keep pace, even amid all those simplified building tools and streamlined UI. 

With its science-fiction roster and potential for brutality, StarCraft's DNA can certainly be felt within Battle Aces. Deeper than it appears, its apparent simplicity belies a game that's prepared to punish you if you're not ready to answer your opponents' challenges. What it offers in return, however, is an experience that speaks to the ideals of Blizzard's strategy giant, all while making a concerted effort to open the genre's doors to all comers, regardless of experience.

A new installment in the real-time strategy series Anno has been announced, and it's set to add yet another game to 2025's busy schedule.

Anno 117: Pax Romana was announced during today's Ubisoft Forward live stream, along with the confirmation that it'll be releasing on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S at some point next year. We've not been shown any gameplay for it yet, but rather just a live-action teaser to get us all hyped. However, speaking on stage after it was shown, creative director Manuel Reinher promises that it will "deliver a Roman gaming experience unlike anything you have ever played."

As revealed via the Ubisoft website, players will step into the role of a Roman Governor in, you guessed it, the year 117 AD. We'll be tasked with building cities while faced with alternate paths – whether you want to "follow the path laid before you, or boldly question the status quo of the empire," the choice is yours. On top of that, you can expect "4X features like diplomacy, military and a solid narrative layer," too, according to a news post.

In addition, it was confirmed that for the first time in the series' history, players will be able to select their starting province – the Celtic wetlands of Albion, or the "traditional" Roman heartlands, Latium – giving real-time strategy fans even more choice over the way they play.

It sounds like the devs are very confident about Anno 117: Pax Romana, anyway, as Reinher also states in the aforementioned news post: "We will not only deliver the fantasy millions of strategy players are waiting for: to govern one of the most iconic ancient empires, we will push beyond that, and change how people see the Roman Empire in games." 

Details might be relatively light on the ground for now, but Ubisoft has confirmed that a dev team live stream is set to take place on June 18, where we'll be able to find out more.

Keep up with all the latest from the Ubisoft Forward event with our coverage of all the news from the stream.

A brand new real-time strategy game and the debut title from Uncapped Games has been revealed at Summer Game Fest 2024, and sounds like it's going to be super accessible, even for RTS newcomers. 

It's called Battle Aces, and it was shown off with an exceptionally cool animated trailer showcasing some of the characters and plenty of fast-paced flying and gunfighting. After that, we also saw a gameplay reveal and got some further details from David Kim, senior game director at Uncapped Games. 

Speaking on stage, Kim explains that Battle Aces aims to be a "RTS game for everyone," regardless of how experienced they are with the genre. "It's for players that are brand new to RTS, as well as RTS veterans," Kim says. "We really want to bring the core fun of RTS to everybody, kind of like how games such as World of Warcraft did for MMOs, or Hearthstone did for card games."

Kim describes Battle Aces as an "action-packed, army vs army game that has a high emphasis on the strategy." It'll utilize 'unit decks' in order to allow players to define the way they want to play, and experiment with "endless" different strategies.

"We want to eliminate the tedious clicks required to play an RTS as much as possible, so the players playing this game are experiencing only the fun parts of playing an RTS game," Kim adds. 

There's currently no full release date for Battle Aces, but as outlined on its official website, it'll be free-to-play when it launches on Steam. If you're keen to give it a go, a closed beta is set to begin later this month, and you can sign up for it now.

Our handy Summer Game Fest 2024 schedule can help you keep track of all the packed gaming showcases taking place today and beyond.

The CEO of a new studio of Warcraft and StarCraft vets has spoken more about the decision to ask players to directly invest in the studio to support its upcoming real-time strategy game, Stormgate, after already raising millions in funding from other studios and a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.

Frost Giant, a team full of veteran devs from the Warcraft series and StarCraft 2, already saw Stormgate reach enormous success on Kickstarter, with prospective players collectively pitching in $2,380,701, despite the funding goal being a fraction of that at $100,000. However, it was announced in February that Frost Giant was also turning to equity funding, allowing players to invest in the actual studio and support Stormgate's early access launch, which is set to arrive later this year. This funding is additional to the $34.7 million in Seed and Series A funding received since the studio opened its doors, from investors such as Kakao Games and Riot Games.

In a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Frost Giant CEO Tim Morten defends the move to seek out equity funding, stating that making a game that "really stands as the next-generation RTS" requires "a lot of investment." He adds that the funding that the studio has raised to date is still significantly less than the budget of many AAA games releasing today.

"The reality is that big games that get made today are spending in excess of $100 million," Morten begins. "So, for us to go up against AAA games, for us to be a game that really stands as the next-generation RTS of the coming years, it does require a lot of investment.

"We’ve raised just under $35 million to date – that’s a big number, but it’s a much smaller number than most AAA games actually deploy against building their products," he continues. "And we are really fortunate to be in a position that we got the funding that we need to get to our early access launch, but we want to launch strongly, and we want to launch in a way that puts us at the same level as AAA games from other publishers.

"So, if there’s a playerbase out there that supports that, this is an opportunity for them to be a part of our success. And really, we’ve been very gratified by the support that we’ve seen from the community so far."

And that support for the equity funding has been pretty significant so far. According to Frost Giant's StartEngine page, where shares in the studio are being sold, a total of 296 investors have pitched in at the time of writing, who have collectively raised almost one million dollars – $938,673.16, to be exact. Considering that the funding plan had a minimum goal of $15,000, Stormgate has once again managed to rack up some significant interest here. 

Whether the RTS will be able to meet fans' lofty expectations when it launches into early access this year is another matter, but Morten believes that funding the game in this way will allow Frost Giant to "retain its own decision-making and bring Stormgate to market with our vision, instead of giving up some of that power to a publisher."

Be sure to check out our list of the best strategy games for some games to dive into right now. 

Homeworld may have launched RTS gaming into 3D space, but even amid the infinite void, it still found a wall to put your back against. Relic's 1999 classic was a near-perfect blend of spectacle and stress, lending you control of astonishing firepower while constantly making you feel like you were one wrong move away from annihilation.

25 years on, Homeworld 3 can muster that same mixture of awe and anxiety, but it's a little less consistent in its execution. When all engines are firing, Blackbird Interactive's sequel is astonishing to behold, while its campaign can be every bit as imaginative and intense as Relic's original work. But the missions take a while to warm up, and they do so at the exact moment the story starts to go cold. Meanwhile, Homeworld 3's big idea, to make that metaphorical wall you're up against a literal one, is only intermittently successful. 

Fleet on the ground

The core of Homeworld 3 is the same as it ever was, its balletic, elegiac space battles emanating from the mobile hub of your Mothership. This bladelike vessel is both the HQ you must protect and the factory floor of your war machine. From here, you build dozens of smaller spaceships that range from single-person fighters to kilometer-long battlecruisers, and direct them to fight enemy fleets across tightly crafted missions. 

In previous games, these battles took place in (mostly) empty space. But in Homeworld 3, space has terrain now. Every mission or match takes place around vast megastructures and landscapes, such as colossal space derelicts, destroyed hyperspace gateways, and free-floating ice shelfs.

These, uh, space-scapes provide a dramatic backdrop to the action. But they play a direct role in the game too. At a basic level, the presence of terrain makes moving your fleet around slightly easier. Instead of having to precisely input the 3D coordinates of a move order using Homeworld's patented movement disc, you can now often just right click on a bit of terrain like you would in a standard RTS (though the movement disc remains for movements across empty space.

But terrain has more specific uses too. Free-floating chunks of debris, for example, can be used as cover by smaller crafts, helping shield them from the projectiles of more powerful ships, each of which has a physical presence in the game world. Many maps are also riven with tunnels and gullies you can use to bypass enemy defenses, and possibly get the drop on them with an ambush. 

It's a great idea in theory. But it's more incidental in practice. Opportunities to use cover and tunnels are relatively scarce. In the campaign, you might take advantage of them occasionally during the early parts of a mission, but the larger your fleet becomes (both in number and ship-size) the less practical cover becomes. It doesn't help that, compared to other RTS' that feature cover – like Company of Heroes – the benefits it provides in Homeworld 3 are not immediately obvious. The game tells you that units in a neutral stance will "try to use cover as much as possible", but this doesn't help you interpret when cover is being effective and when it isn't. It lacks the clarity of CoH's "soldiers placed behind this big stone wall will be protected from gunfire unless flanked or blown to smithereens".

The biggest problem with these megastructures, however, is they make your units seem smaller than in previous Homeworld games. Representing scale has historically been an issue for the series – your interceptors have always looked a bit like flies swarming around a cow's backside during battle. 

But your Mothership at least seemed massive, helping you understand how "big" other ships were. Now, though, even your Mothership frequently appears tiny compared to the massive structures that constantly surround you. To properly sell the fantasy, Homeworld 3 needs levels which properly reflect the scale of the ships versus the vastness of the world. 

Ion the prize

Fortunately, the fundamentals of Homeworld are as robust as ever. Its rock, paper, scissors unit combat remains both intuitive and satisfying, further bolstered by the fact that units have deployable abilities that can give you an extra edge in combat. Ion Cannon frigates, for example, can "Overcharge" their lasers for a huge damage boost at the cost of a longer recharge, while battlecruisers can disable their own weaponry to give all nearby ships a boost to damage, making them useful hubs to build fleet around. The addition of stationary turrets, which stick themselves to a surface also helps to bring the new terrain into play, letting you set up fixed defenses to free up ships for aggressive maneuvers, or establish progressively higher backlines to gradually push your opponent back. 

Turrets can be extremely useful, although deploying them can be a little fiddly. Then again 'a little fiddly' could surmise Homeworld 3 in general. Again, Homeworld's controls have never been the most intuitive, and learning how and when to move ships around is a big part of its reward. Nonetheless, Homeworld 3 makes some unforced errors. It walks back Homeworld 2's innovation to have smaller units grouped into squadrons by default. Hence, if you want different squads of Fleet Bombers or recon fighters, you'll have to assign them to different unit groups every time you build them. 

Another annoying element is that selecting a manufacturing unit on the map, like a Carrier or your Mothership, doesn't automatically switch to their build menu. You have to do that separately in the drop-down menu in the top right corner, meaning you can easily end up building all your reinforcements on the completely wrong side of the map.

When everything comes together, though, the rewards can be enormous. Even with the diminished scale, Homeworld 3 can pop off in tremendously satisfying fashion. Skirmishes between the smallest craft are impressive, as your interceptors' gatling guns spit glowing streams of projectiles at their foes. But this pales in comparison to a squad of Ion Cannon Frigates firing white hot beams of death across several kilometers of space, or a group of Destroyers launching a constellation of torpedoes into the side of a battlecruiser until it bursts in an ice-blue explosion. Homeworld 3 sounds incredible too, from the naturalistic radio chatter that suddenly cuts off when the ship in question puffs out of existence, to Paul Ruskay's magnificently eerie score, which lives up every bit to his earlier work in the series.

Campaign supernova

Visually and audibly, Homeworld 3 is a space game with vision. The same can't quite be said for its narrative, despite showing some early promise. Set 20 years after the events of Homeworld 2, the campaign's story centers around Imogen S'jet, descendent and disciple of the original games' protagonist Karan S'jet. Karan and her ship – the Khar-Sajuuk has been missing for most of this time, having departed to investigate an anomaly at the edge of space. When that anomaly starts causing massive destruction across several remote worlds, Imogen is tasked with following in Karan's footsteps, and discovering the truth behind this bizarre interstellar enigma.

The first half of the story is enjoyable, mysterious, and convincingly written. It starts with the traditional mission of putting your new Mothership through its paces, with coolly uttered technical jargon flowing between your subordinates as you boot up the ship's various systems. When all's ship-shape, you then inch your way toward Karan's last known location, contending with raiders, sabotage, and asteroid fields as you do so.  

Unfortunately, the story's latter half is spoiled by the introduction of a villain who doesn't so much chew the scenery as swallow it whole, and it really pulls you out of the somber, sincere atmosphere Homeworld 3 has slowly built up to this point. After this, the story becomes a very lackluster affair, and several enjoyable callbacks to the previous games in the series aren't enough to redeem it.

Yet while Homeworld 3's story may stumble, the individual mission scenarios are more consistently compelling. Highlights include a vertical assault on a massive fortified shipyard, a spectacular siege defense where you hold off an army of vessels spilling out of an interstellar gate, and a 'stealth' mission where you need to sneak the Mothership through an icy ravine while using smaller ships to take out overhead patrols. 

The campaign is generally adept at twisting Homeworld's mechanics in interesting ways, and stretching your capacity to use the resources at your disposal. It is a slightly shorter campaign than previous Homeworld games, with a difficulty level leaning a little too heavily toward the easy side. But the final two Homeworld 3 missions are both significantly longer and harder than those that come before them, with both seriously challenging your logistics as you take on scores of enemies on multiple fronts. 

Sadly, these missions were also the buggiest I played. I encountered a handful of issues in the broader campaign, mostly revolving around how the game continues to play out even during cutscenes. But Homeworld 3 saved its worst bugs for last. The penultimate mission randomly spawned two enemies in an inaccessible area of the map just after it gave me an objective to clear all remaining enemies, which I only completed because those enemies spent fifteen minutes scudding across the map to fight me. The final mission was beset by an array of problems, ranging from the blue radial splashes of the sensor screen obscuring the battlefield in standard visual mode, to units just not allowing me to select them. 

It's also worth noting that Homeworld 3 is pretty performance intensive, and while my experience was mostly smooth, some larger battles in the game's latter half slowed my game to a crawl.

Be my wingman

Outside of the campaign, Homeworld 3 features the usual offering of multiplayer and skirmish modes, which let you battle against one or several opponents on maps of varying size. But it also adds a brand new mode called 'War Games', which aims to turn Homeworld into a rogue-like. After picking a specific fleet type, War Games launches you into a succession of increasingly difficult maps, which push you to complete rapid-fire objectives while also collecting "artifacts", each of which lets you pick from three potential upgrades to your ships. Each War Game culminates in a battle against a capital ship, with rewards from your run letting you purchase more powerful fleet-types.

Essentially, it's a randomly generated mini-campaign that can be completed in around an hour. It's a fun complement to the main campaign, with its fast pace doubling down on the frantic plate-spinning of the main campaign. Yet while War Games can be played solo, it feels geared toward cooperative play, as with one player you lose much of the scale associated with Homeworld's space battles. It's still good for a quick blast of Homeworld action, but if you want a full-fat Homeworld 3 battle without the aid of friends, you're better off with the more traditional skirmish or multiplayer.

Homeworld 3 doesn't represent a major step forward for the series, but it does bring the series safely into the modern era. Its campaign could be bigger, its story better, its controls a little more refined. But most of what it does it does well, and when its combat engine really cranks the handle it is utterly sublime. I'd love to see Blackbird do more with the series, take the fundamentals they've rebuilt here and truly push the boundaries of the series. But if this proves to be Homeworld's final foray into the final frontier, then it goes out with more of a bang than a whimper.

Homeworld 3 was reviewed on PC, with code provided by the publisher.

A new studio made of strategy game veterans, including a StarCraft lead, is gearing up to reveal its fresh take on the RTS genre.

As highlighted by VGC, Tencent-owned studio Uncapped Games has released a short documentary that delves into its ambitions to create a "new type of RTS." The studio is being headed up by David Kim - who previously worked on StarCraft 2 as multiplayer lead - and features developers who have worked on other notable strategy games including Warcraft, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, and more. 

The studio's website reveals Uncapped Games is on a mission to "redefine" the strategy genre by "creating a paradigm shift" that will allow for a more action-oriented, fast-paced, and fun-focused experience that can be enjoyed by everyone. To do this, the team is developing a "next-generation" RTS for PC that refines the genre's core principles and introduces groundbreaking innovations.

The studio's upcoming game will allow players to customize their army, expand their economy, and advance their technology in a game with "infinite replayability." In the documentary, Kim said: "Players will define their own way to play, and focus on commanding fast-paced, large-scale battles. Players will enjoy more moment-to-moment strategic decision-making in each game, instead of waiting for that next fun action moment."

It's been a few years since Uncapped Games began working on its mysterious title, but we can expect a full reveal of it during this year's Summer Games Fest - which is set to take place on June 7, 2024. "Once we announce the game, and we go into closed beta, from that point onwards, we want to be as direct, as honest, as transparent as possible with the community and work on the design iteration together," Kim also shared in the documentary. 

"I think when we eventually announce the game and, you know, show it to everyone, we really hope everyone resonates and likes what we made," Ted Park, the game's art director reveals. "At the same time, the effort of putting everything in there, it's a reward in itself in a lot of ways."

Find out what else we've got to look forward to this year with our new games 2024 list. 

Given the opportunity to do anything, what would you choose? When Ensemble Studios' management team asked itself this question, in late 2004, there was a consensus: not this. The studio had spent the better part of a decade iterating its brand of real-time strategy, following its 1997 debut Age Of Empires with two direct sequels, a number of expansions, and a spinoff in Age Of Mythology that not only pivoted this winning formula into fantasy but also its first fully 3D engine. Since Ensemble's acquisition in 2001, this path had been followed under the firm encouragement of Microsoft. Now, as the team began to look beyond Age Of Empires 3, it was growing restless. The RTS had been all Ensemble had ever known, and it wanted to spread its wings. 

Some in the studio's leadership were keen to try their hand at an MMORPG, spurred by the wildly popular beta of World Of Warcraft; others suggested an action RPG in the vein of Diablo. Both were backed enthusiastically, but lead programmer Angelo Laudon floated a more conservative option, one that would help keep the suits upstairs happy: stick to the RTS format on which the studio had built its name, while expanding beyond the PC audience.

At the time, the most high-profile example of a console RTS was StarCraft 64, a clumsy port of Blizzard's PC classic that ran poorly and lacked essential features. When Ensemble's own Age Of Empires 2 had been brought to PlayStation 2 a few years before, the port did little more than tie cursor movement to the left analogue stick and the Select button to X. "Angelo and I always felt like there were ways to pull it off that nobody was doing," Halo Wars producer Chris Rippy says. The plan, then, was to build a truly console-first RTS from the ground up, something that could live comfortably on the soon-to-launch Xbox 360. 

The bulk of the studio was tasked with finishing Age Of Empires 3 before moving on to the Diablo concept, another team was put onto the MMO project, and a final group – composed only of Laudon, Rippy and four others – got to work prototyping a console RTS codenamed 'Phoenix'. One of those four was Graeme Devine, a well-travelled designer and programmer whose credits spanned Doom 3 and cult puzzler The 7th Guest. Studio leadership reckoned his talents were being wasted coding Age Of Empires 3, and suggested he take the reins of Phoenix's design. Relatively new to the studio, he hadn't yet burned out on the genre – and previous experience had taught him not to write off experimental console ideas. "I thought back to my time at Id, when we were just beginning Doom 3, and Halo came out for the first Xbox," he recalls. He and his colleagues dismissed the idea of a console FPS outright. "And then we played Halo and were like, 'Oh. Look at that. That's pretty darn playable'."

I can see your Halo

Achieving something similar with Phoenix wouldn't be easy. The RTS was perhaps even more bound to PC and mouse-and-keyboard controls than the FPS before it. Rippy lists some of the questions that faced the team: "What was it like to select units? What was it like to move units? What was it like to gather resources? It was really just the most basic things." In search of answers, the team dedicated the first year of development to making a fully functional console port of Age Of Mythology to demonstrate that intuitive console controller support was even possible. "We always felt, at least at the beginning, that we were a skunkworks team off to the side," Rippy says. "We needed to prove ourselves." Tinkering with narrative, meanwhile, Devine decided that the game would step away from the historical settings – fantastical or otherwise – to which the studio had previously been tied. Phoenix would instead be a sci-fi epic that drew on War Of The Worlds and 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Humans go to the Moon, we find structures on the Moon, and we set off a cosmic car alarm," Devine says. An alien race called the Sway would follow the noise, triggering an invasion of Earth. 

Asymmetry was key. As in StarCraft, the human and alien factions would sport distinct unit types, abilities, upgrade paths and playstyles. The Sway would be able to blanket sections of the map in a fog of war, while the humans relied on stealth tactics. Both would advance through technological stages – much like the eras in Age Of Empires – but the Sway would do so by sacrificing their own units, adding a new dimension to skirmishes. Designs changed often, and the team's small size meant it could nimbly prototype and implement new ideas. "One of Ensemble's strengths was to playtest every day," Devine says, with the rest of the studio often joining in to give pointers. Eventually, they honed Phoenix to a state where they felt it was fun to play. "That was the point where we went to Microsoft." 

The publisher hadn't greenlit any of Ensemble's smaller prototypes in the past, but it liked Phoenix. Microsoft was keen to have one of its most lauded studios produce something for its new platform, and seemed impressed by what the team had produced. There was just one snag. RTS had no proven console audience, and executives worried that Phoenix would struggle to sell without attachment to a bigger brand. Ensemble could develop the prototype into a full game, Microsoft said, on the condition that it became a Halo spinoff. 

Devine took this hard. He had spent a year building out a world of alien races, languages and future history. Now, he was being told to chuck it away for a series about which he knew little. "I baulked," he says. "I baulked badly. I did not like the idea." He was given the weekend to think about it. Then the arrangement was placed in stronger terms: if the team didn't get on board with the Halo pivot, there would be layoffs. "Well, OK, then," Devine reasoned at the time. "I guess I like Halo." 

Bar the control system, which the team felt they'd just about cracked, most of the existing design work couldn't neatly map onto the Halo universe, making it redundant. And while Devine found a richer world in Halo than expected, the transition was made more complicated by the fact Ensemble was now working with another studio's IP. To start their relationship on the right foot, Devine and Rippy visited Bungie's headquarters in Seattle to demo an early build. The atmosphere was tense. Many Bungie staff seemed confused. After hesitations, Ensemble was given permission to add to the Halo canon – ideally in a far-off corner of the universe. 

Devine remembers Bungie's pitch: "Why don't you set this 100,000 years before the events of Halo, in the time of the Forerunners?" Ensemble was on board, but not Microsoft: "'No, we want Spartans'." Except Ensemble couldn't use the one Spartan everyone knew. Master Chief – and indeed all of Halo's other central characters – were off limits, as the team skirted carefully around the in-development Halo 3 and the (ill-fated) Halo film. With Bungie's assistance, Devine created a new crew of UNSC soldiers that Ensemble could play with, avoiding the risk of stepping on any toes.

Give us space

While Halo Wars was progressing, Ensemble's other projects were struggling. The MMO team had pivoted that game into another Halo-themed spinoff without Microsoft's request or approval. The Diablo-style ARPG project was cancelled when Microsoft refused to greenlight it, and the prototype that replaced it – a Zeldainspired spy game called Agent – fared no better. The team was split up, and its staff distributed among the MMO and Halo Wars. The extra hands were sorely needed. Despite being the only active project at Ensemble that had received Microsoft's approval, Halo Wars had the smallest team. But, as senior staff rolled off other projects, the balance of what was once a lean, nimble unit shifted. Devine was left to focus on the narrative, while lead design duties were handed over to Dave Pottinger. 

A veteran of Ensemble who'd worked across all of the studio's releases, Pottinger immediately spotted problems: "The simulation was floundering, the pathfinding was pretty awful, and the computer-player AI was nonexistent." Many of the system improvements the studio had developed for Age Of Empires 3 hadn't been brought over to Halo Wars, while many of the design ideas borrowed from that series proved unworkable on console. "The complexity of the game was difficult for console players," Pottinger says. "When I took over as lead designer, we were sending builds out and people were playing them and they weren't having fun, because it was just too hard." Soldiers differentiated only by their weapons might work in a medieval setting but they looked confusingly similar in the world of Halo; selecting individual units from the hundreds on screen was a pain using analogue sticks; and managing an economy and building a base bogged down the momentum of skirmishes. 

Under Pottinger, the game was streamlined. The economy was changed to a two-resource system that didn't involve individual gatherer units; freestyle base-building was pared down to a preset building system; and a Select All option was added so that players could instantly control their entire force. Difficulties remained, though. Halo Wars was now a console game, an RTS and the next entry in Microsoft's biggest game series. But which was it first? "We had a lot of internal debate, really right up until the end, about the priority of those things," Pottinger remembers. "In my view, it was: Halo, console, RTS. Once you decide to make a Halo game, you have to deliver a Halo game." 

No wonder, then, that the Spartans were put front and centre, given the ability to hijack Covenant vehicles, and made an essential part of the UNSC roster. In some ways, though, this was anathema to Ensemble's RTS principles, limiting players' strategic options by encouraging them to rely on a specific unit. But finding a balance between compelling and console-friendly design was always the challenge. "We had to pull back on some depth, and, honestly, we pulled back too much," Pottinger says. "Then we ran out of time to put the right amount of depth in. I think about Halo Wars as a lot of missed opportunities." 

Yet when the game finally launched, those missed opportunities weren't as clear to players as its makers. Halo Wars was popular enough to get a sequel – albeit not within the same studio. With the MMO project cancelled several months earlier, Microsoft announced ahead of Halo Wars' release that this would be the studio's final game. Ensemble, then, spent its last days working in the very genre its leadership had once been desperate to escape. It made sure, at least, to go out with a bang. "A lot of people thought about Halo Wars not necessarily just as a footnote to Microsoft," Devine says, "but as what Ensemble can do when we're at our best. And it was Ensemble at its best."

This feature originally appeared in Edge magazine. For more fantastic features, you can subscribe to Edge right here or pick up a single issue today. 

The developers behind Stormgate are looking for players to invest in their studio, after smashing through their Kickstarter goals with over $2 million raised.

As reported by VG247, developer Frost Giant has turned to a new method of funding for its upcoming game Stormgate: equity funding. The developer is looking for fans to invest in the studio itself, and the funding is designed to "support marketing efforts for Stormgate's upcoming Early Access launch on Steam," according to the studio.

"Frost Giant Studios' crowd-equity offering on StartEngine will enable private investors and passionate players to actually be our business partners, to help launch Stormgate in the best way possible – together," Frost Giant CEO Tim Morten said in a press release. At the time of writing, Frost Giant has accrued $43,145.68 from 18 investors.

As noted above, these funds aren't being raised to fund Stormgate, because it's already secured all the funding it needs to be developed. That was before Frost Giant launched Stormgate's Kickstarter campaign, which was designed to add new elements to the game on top of the foundations already established, like a 3v3 mode and "advanced hero customization."

Despite being already funded, Stormgate sailed past $2 million raised from fans via Kickstarter, which is a far cry from $100,000, which is what Frost Giant was originally aiming for when launching the Kickstarter campaign. The final figure came from precisely 28,143 backers on Kickstarter, if you're curious about whether Stormgate has an established fan base already, despite not even having launched.

Stormgate's early access period, which Morten highlights above, will kick off at some point later this year, and Frost Giant plans for it to last right around one year in total. After this, Stormgate will fully launch, which is what Morten and company are now seeking more funding for. 

Keep an eye on our new games 2024 guide for a look at all the other titles launching across the year. 

Valve has revealed the 50 most-played demos from 2024's Steam Next Fest, and topping the list is the dungeon crawler RPG Dungeonborne, the self-styled "next-gen" RTS Stormgate, and my personal favorite, the moody survival driving sim set in the lush Pacific Northwest rainforest, Pacific Drive.

Filling out the top 10 are the strategy space RTS Homeworld 3, the auto-battler strategy game Backpack Battles, the zombie survival sandbox Dread Dawn, the turn-based strategy game Millennia, the roguelike deckbuilder Balatro, the online co-op dungeon-crawler Rotwood, and the derivative, aptly named Metroidvania Deviator. 

You can check out the full list for yourself here, but suffice it to say there's an eclectic mix of all sorts of different genres and themes in there. I'm a little bummed to see so little love for horror on the list, especially after playing demos for this gorgeous Dark Souls and Princess Mononoke-inspired boss rush horror and this unimaginably dark PS2-style indie horror game, but I'm both surprised and happy to see a couple of new co-op horror games on the list which previously had escaped my radar.

In a press release, Valve said: "This event racked up more than 3 million wishlists across all available demos; the most of any Next Fest so far!" Last week, I reported on the indie developer community's response to the unprecedented amount of engagement in this year's Steam Next Fest and how helpful it is to smaller studios fighting for some precious exposure.

Looking to add even more games to your wishlist? Have a look through our list of upcoming indie games for 2024 and beyond.

Long-awaited RTS revival Homeworld 3 has been delayed yet again.

Once slated for an early 2023 release after a previous delay, Homeworld 3 currently has a March 8 release date on Steam. That's now been moved to May 13, or really May 10 with advanced access via the game's fancy editions, following a delay announced smack in the middle of the game's ongoing Steam Next Fest demo offering.

"This was our first time seeing the game played at scale, which is always an equally thrilling and nerve-wracking moment," reads a statement from developer Blackbird Interactive and publisher Gearbox Publishing. "We also recently gathered a dedicated group of players from outside our organizations to play through the full game. This resulted in additional insights and perspective that will be incorporated to make Homeworld 3 the best experience possible.   

"After careful analysis of feedback, we made the decision to delay the global launch of Homeworld 3 until May 13, with advanced access set for May 10, to ensure that we’re making the final tweaks needed to deliver at the level of quality that we strive for and you deserve.

"To say that you as a community of players have been waiting patiently for this next installment would be an understatement, and we are deeply appreciative of that. We will continue to keep you updated on our progress."

On the bright side, Steam Next Fest runs until February 12, so you've got a few days left to quench your thirst for sci-fi RTS action. This delay should also give Blackbird more time to act on feedback from this demo period, as well as the full playthroughs it apparently ran internally. But hey, at least we know it's mostly finished, and really, what's another few months at this point? (It's another few months is what it is, which may be especially painful to fans who tried the demo in the past few days and were getting hyped for the impending launch, but I digress.)

Blackbird founder Rob Cunningham previously said "Homeworld 3 was our original dream for Homeworld 2," adding that he's waited 20 years to make the dream RTS, which is apparently "way easier to play" than the first game. 

As our friends at Edge reported, Homeworld 3 recaptures the tone of the classic RTS while realigning it with a new generation. 

Kingdom-building strategy game Lords Mobile is partnering with Italian hypercar brand Pagani to celebrate its 8th anniversary. The anniversary event, which runs throughout February, will feature new items, activities, and even a giveaway for one lucky winner.

Throughout the event, Lords Mobile players will be able to take part in the Pagani Grand Prix. Using the stunning Zonda F Coupe, you'll use Fuel to take to the racetrack, completing Endurance Achievements to earn prizes. You can earn fuel from Daily Login Events, Monster Hunts, and Kingdom Labors, and the Grand Prix will offer an exclusive Castle Skin based on the Zonda F Coupe, as well as emotes, avatars, and more.

There's also the Pit Stop, where you can use the Racetrack Tokens you earn from the Pagani Grand Prix in exchange for the Racetrack Star Leader skin, new Artifacts, and collab emotes and avatars.

As well as taking part via the game itself, players will be able to head to the official event website. From February 5 to February 10, you can complete the Pagani Puzzle, offering bonus gifts. After the event ends, Lords Mobile and Pagani will pick one winner to claim a Speedster Bundle, featuring custom Lords Mobile x BOSE bluetooth earphones, an Oath Keeper Figure, a Lords Mobile x Logitech keyboard & mouse set, a Lords Mobile x Soocas electric toothbrush, and a Lords Mobile x Anker power bank. And from February 11 to February 20, daily login events will grant dice that you can use to complete the Pagani Power event and earn Power Tokens that can be spent on limited-stock items in the gift shop.

Finally, Lords Mobile developer IGG is hoping to celebrate the game's 8th anniversary in style by breaking an official Guinness World Record. IGG is looking for more than 80,000 Lords and Ladies to submit anniversary artwork in an attempt to break the record for 'Most Participants to an online ASCII image'. Once the piece is complete, the top 20 players in the anniversary challenges will win a limited edition art book commemorating the effort, as well as other amazing prizes.

To take part in the Lords Mobile 8th anniversary event, you can download the game via the App Store, Google Play, or on PC - and make sure to follow along with the community on Facebook and Discord.

A new real-time strategy game from former Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 developers has blitzed past its Kickstarter target, amassing funds of over $2 million.

Stormgate is the brand new project from Frost Giant Studios, and it's become quite the success story on Kickstarter. Initially seeking just $100,000 to get its new game fully funded, Stormgate has accrued $2,380,701 from a grand total of 28,143 backers, which means its funded nearly every single one of its stretch goals.

This means Stormgate backers have unlocked new elements like profile portraits, "advanced hero customization," expanded personalities for bots, new three-play weekly mutators to mix up gameplay, and many more stretch goals for new features on Kickstarter.

Stormgate's astounding Kickstarter campaign took place even after it was fully-funded for launch. "This Kickstarter is in part a response to fan requests for a way to purchase a physical Collector's Edition of Stormgate," the Kickstarter page reads, so Frost Giant Studios' game really has gone above and beyond with this campaign.

Billed as a "hyper-responsive real-time strategy game," Stormgate will feature an ongoing campaign, a 1v1 mode, a 3v3 mode, three-player online co-op, a "powerful editor," and much more. It's even called a "Blizzard-style RTS" by Frost Giant Studios, which gives backers a great idea of what they're in for. In fact, the new game is even called a "spiritual successor" to the likes of Warcraft and Starcraft.

Stormgate's going to have an entire year of early access, while Frost Giant Studios is busy working away on elements like the editor, the 3v3 mode, the game's different factions, and more. There's no word on when this early access period will start, but after it's over, Stormgate will hopefully be in a position to fully launch.

Check out our new games 2024 guide for a look ahead at some great upcoming titles to play while we wait for the new RTS to drop.

An upcoming RTS game from Warcraft and StarCraft veterans has managed to gain 1875% of its original Kickstarter goal, with just over two weeks left to go on its campaign. 

Last month, we reported that Stormgate had smashed its $100,000 Kickstarter goal by more than 600% in less than 25 hours. Now, 41 days later, it seems real-time strategy fans just can't wait to play this, as they've raised a further $735,000+ for the game in a little over a month. If you did want to join in, there's still another 16 days before Stormgate's Kickstarter campaign ends on February 1, 2024. 

Unsurprisingly, fans of Stormgate have unlocked a lot of the campaign's stretch goals, including an additional tileset, HUD skin, a new player assist tool, and more. There are only two stretch goals left, and they're for a Webtoon Series based on the game ($2 million) and an Editor Early Preview for maps, mods, and custom games ($2.25 million). At the rate we've seen this project take off so far, this could very well be reached in just over two weeks.

If this is the first time you've heard of Stormgate, let us catch you up. Some of the developers that make up developer Frost Giant Studios have previously worked at Blizzard, hence the link to Warcraft and Starcraft. The upcoming game is a "hyper-responsive" real-time strategy game that will place players hundreds of years in the future as they build a base, harvest resources, and command armies. 

We don't have an exact release date for Stormgate just yet, but it's expected to launch via early access in the summer. A demo/beta will also be available to all players from February 5 - 12, 2024. 

Take a look at our best strategy games list to see what we can play while we wait for Stormgate.

Homeworld 3 is a dream two decades in the making, according to director and Blackbird Interactive founder Rob Cunningham.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Cunningham shares his excitement at finally being able to implement ideas that he's had since the legendary RTS series first took flight. "It was profoundly satisfying to finally be making the game that you had in your mind, finished, for a long time before," he says. "In essence, Homeworld 3 was our original dream for Homeworld 2."

Homeworld 1 launched in 1999, while its sequel followed four years later, and according to Cunningham, the vision for Homeworld 3 was "utterly impossible" then due to the technological constraints of the time. "We couldn't do massive environments with these megaliths," he explains, "so we had to wait 20 years."

Recalling the limitations of the first game, Cunningham says, "The problem was the space: there was just so much space. We had some asteroids, but that was it. We did our best to make it strategically interesting, but there was really no other decision-making happening in the game space. Immediately, we started thinking, 'What can we do about putting terrain in space?'"

The answer lay in those aforementioned megaliths, giant space structures which add an extra tactical layer to proceedings by offering new ways to flank the enemy as well as defensive options to keep your spaceship safe from incoming fire. 

Despite being heavier on features, according to its creators, players will have an easier time getting to grips with the latest entry in the Homeworld series. "With Homeworld 3, the terrain actually helps the player move around because you can select your units and click on the terrain, and they immediately go to that spot," Cunningham explains. It's way easier to play Homeworld 3 than it was to play Homeworld 1."

To really drive the point that Homeworld 3 is less punishing than its predecessors, game director Lance Meuller adds, "Homeworld 1 and 2 were known for very hard counters for units. You'd need an assault frigate or flak frigate to take out fighter units. For Homeworld 3, we're trying to soften that as much as possible, and terrain's a very big factor for softening counters."

You'll find the full interview in issue 380 of PC Gamer, grab a single issue or set up a subscription now via Magazines Direct.

Former StarCraft and Warcraft are developing a new RTS game, and it's already gained seven times its $100,000 Kickstarter goal in just 24 hours.

Stormgate, a free-to-play real-time strategy game for PC, is being developed by Frost Giant Studio, which is made up of various former Blizzard employees. The project launched on Kickstarter on December 6, with a goal of $100,000, and a whole 15 minutes into its campaign, it managed to raise the entire amount. Now, less than 24 hours after it launched, the Kickstarter has raised $744,388, obliterating that goal with weeks still remaining in the campaign. 

It's no surprise that there are so many people excited about this project but I still can't believe just how fast the studio managed to reach its goal. There are still 57 days left before the Kickstarter ends, so I can only imagine how much more cash Frost Giant Studio will be able to collect in that time. Thanks to all of this support, fans have managed to unlock several of Stormgate's stretch goals with just two more left to go.

So what is Stormgate? According to the Kickstarter, it's a "hyper-responsive RTS game that will feature an ongoing campaign, 3P co-op, 1v1, 3v3, and powerful editor, and more." More specifically, players will experience a world set hundreds of years in the future (created in Unreal Engine 5) where they'll have to build a base, harvest resources, and command armies. 

If you were already a fan of the Warcraft and StarCraft real-time strategy games "it should feel familiar, like a true spiritual successor to those games," the devs claim. That being said, it won't be an exact copy as the Stormgate devs are aiming for a “modern take” on traditional strategy games. 

The best news of all is that we shouldn't have to wait too long to play Stormgate ourselves. Not only is the game scheduled for release in 2024, but now that the Kickstarter campaign has been a complete success, the team has said Stormgate Founders (those who contributed to a certain tier of the campaign) will be able to take part in a playtest which is scheduled to begin in February 2024. 

While we wait to see how the Stormgate Kickstarter campaign ends, take a look at our best strategy games list.