I happen to go to Slitherine’s website to browse around and they had a news item posted today about this game. It caught my eye because it states that it is a spiritual successor to Armageddon Empires. I went through their forum and it does not look like there is any involvement from Cryptic Comet or Vic Davis.
I’ll keep an eye on it, but if it’s not by Vic Davis, I doubt it will ever live up to Armageddon Empires. But I might be wrong, of course.
On that note, I hope we’ll see another videogame designed by Vic Davis one day.
Personally, I would love to see Vic Davis designing games with the support of a good Dev team/Publisher.
Same. I would gladly be a dev in his team if I could. :)
So did Vic sell up to Slitherine? (not a bad idea if he was not enjoying the game dev thing). Or when they say spiritual successor do they just mean it was inspired by the original?
It looks a little less gritty than Vic’s original awesome game, not sure about that graphical style for a post apocalyptic kind of world setting? Still graphics are low down the list of priorities.
Vic’s said here, and elsewhere that for now at least he’s no longer in the game designing business. Be curious to see if he got a little something from Slitherine for selling the use of the title of his game.
I guess it depends on what they mean by spiritual successor. I am guessing that Vic gets nothing they are just acknowledging where the idea for the game comes from.
I thought he said he was no longer in the video game designing business, and he’s designing board games now?
That’s correct.
Is this Matrix/Slitherine’s first ‘early access’ game? I wonder what the price point will be like.
Update A
The introduction of Stealth, which will add sabotage, assassination, and more to the game. Infiltrate enemy bases with new units and heroes to sabotage key facilities and disrupt your opponent’s best-laid plans. Then deploy Sentinel units to uncover the enemy’s own hidden forces.
Update B
Full deck-building mode, to select precisely which cards you want to bring to the fight. Tailor decks around your favourite units and heroes, then take on opponents both online and off.
Update C
Air Strike, Anti-Air Defence, and Air Recon abilities: new gameplay mechanics and 4 brand new units join the fight, bringing exciting new tactical possibilities!
Update D
Introducing a full, story-driven, mission-based single player campaign, revealing more about the Skywatchers and their desperate struggle for survival against the Automata.
Vic did mention that there were some reimaginations of his game in the works by others last year:http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?75220-Cryptic-Comet&p=3623071&viewfull=1#post3623071
This looks (art style) like a strange blending of Endless Legend and Massive Chalice.
Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space and Sovereignty:Crown of Kings were early access titles (Sovereignty still is).
I forgot about that; maybe he is obtaining some financial reward in that case (I hope so).
So the developer is Owen Farraday, creator of the Pocket Tactics mobile strategy website. He posted about the game over at Broken Forum.
Have you ever fired up Vic Davis’s classic PC strategy game Armageddon Empires and wished that somebody would make an AE-style game with a modern UI and maybe some nifty 3D graphics?
I wanted that game. Also, being terminally overconfident and hopelessly naive, I decided I would just make it myself.
Thanks for digging that up!
Interesting what he writes about Vic’s involvement and how the IP had to be switched due to another publisher. Refreshing to see that Owen was involving Vic from the get go. :)
Wow, I didn’t see his reply to my question until now. That sucks.
For those wondering about Vic Davis’s involvement, Owen writes:
Vic was very closely involved at first. In fact, at one point, this was intended to be Amageddon Empires: Enhanced Edition. But then a big famous IP holder decided that some elements of AE were too close to their Very Famous IP. Big famous IP holder and their very scary lawyers convinced us to make big changes – I wrote this new setting, backstory and characters because of that. At that point, the game bore almost no thematic resemblance to AE and Vic decided that he didn’t want to be involved anymore. I regret that because my admiration for Vic is borderline religious, but I really wanted to make this game.
Hard to have an opinion on the game until someone gets to actually lay hands on it. Might be cool, but I’m bummed that the Empire and its aesthetics are gone (not to mention the xenos and mutants).
Not hard to guess which IP holder that was.
I have no idea. So for me anyway, it is hard to guess. Help me out.
Wait… don’t tell me Bethesda would do that. Please, no.