Friday, June 10th 2022
Hell, It's About Time! Frost Giant Studios Unveils Stormgate, the First Truly Social RTS
Millions of viewers around the world today watched the world premiere cinematic trailer for Frost Giant Studios' eagerly-anticipated real-time strategy game, Stormgate. Southern California-based Frost Giant Studios was founded in 2020 by Tim Morten and Tim Campbell, veteran game development leaders who helped create some of the most acclaimed and best-selling PC games of all time-as well as some of the most-watched esports-including Blizzard Entertainment's WarCraft III and StarCraft II.
"We are building Stormgate for the real-time strategy community--past, present, and future," said Tim Morten, CEO and production director at Frost Giant Studios. "Our vision is to create a social experience that breaks down the barriers that have kept people away, to welcome back players who have been waiting for the next great RTS, and to prove that the RTS genre can thrive once again."
Stormgate is coming to Windows PC via Steam and will be free-to-play. Players will be able to take part in a wide range of game modes and activities including:
Built in Unreal Engine 5, Stormgate will support high-resolution HD visuals in 4K and hundreds of unit models in epic, large-scale wars across a variety of maps and tilesets. The user interface is also being designed to make RTS more approachable by eliminating unnecessary inputs, automatically assigning units to control groups, and streamlining gameplay.
Stormgate's powerful in-game editor arms creators with the same tools that Frost Giant is using to build the game, in a creator-friendly ecosystem where creativity and effort will be rewarded.
"The Stormgate universe's combination of science fiction and fantasy, along with our focus on character-driven narratives, will provide years of storytelling opportunities for our players to enjoy," said Tim Campbell, president and game director at Frost Giant Studios. "Our team is building a best-in-class real-time strategy game that will continue the RTS tradition of high-skill competitive play while innovating in areas such as user interface and co-op to make the genre more approachable than ever before."
Stormgate takes place in an all-new post-apocalyptic game setting where science fiction and fantasy collide. The story begins hundreds of years in Earth's future, following the near-extinction of humanity. The great calamity was caused by the Infernals—a playable alien race of demonic invaders hellbent on claiming this planet for their own. These otherworldly demons emerged from Stormgates—seemingly dormant portals that began pouring out demons during powerful solar storms. As the Infernals return to threaten humanity once again, humans must gather their courage—and climb into their 20-foot tall mechs—to save the world.
RTS fans who have been waiting for this announcement won't have to wait long to learn even more. Stormgate will be featured on PC Gamer's PC Gaming Show, which kicks off on Sunday, June 12, at 1:00 p.m. PT, hosted by Sean 'Day[9]' Plott of day9.tv.
Stormgate is currently in the pre-alpha development stage and is scheduled to commence beta testing in 2023. To learn more, visit playstormgate.com, where you can sign up to join the beta test and be among the first to play.
Source:
Frost Giant
"We are building Stormgate for the real-time strategy community--past, present, and future," said Tim Morten, CEO and production director at Frost Giant Studios. "Our vision is to create a social experience that breaks down the barriers that have kept people away, to welcome back players who have been waiting for the next great RTS, and to prove that the RTS genre can thrive once again."
- story-driven campaign missions, playable solo or with a friend
- fully-integrated in-client esports, including 1v1 ranked matches on the competitive ladder and team-based 3v3 with unique win conditions
- a cooperative 3vE (three players vs. AI) mode, featuring meta-progression and ways to customize army abilities to create powerful synergies
- expressing their creativity and design skills with the in-game Editor
- custom games created by other members of the community
- spectating matches and leveling up IRL with enhanced learning tools
Built in Unreal Engine 5, Stormgate will support high-resolution HD visuals in 4K and hundreds of unit models in epic, large-scale wars across a variety of maps and tilesets. The user interface is also being designed to make RTS more approachable by eliminating unnecessary inputs, automatically assigning units to control groups, and streamlining gameplay.
Stormgate's powerful in-game editor arms creators with the same tools that Frost Giant is using to build the game, in a creator-friendly ecosystem where creativity and effort will be rewarded.
"The Stormgate universe's combination of science fiction and fantasy, along with our focus on character-driven narratives, will provide years of storytelling opportunities for our players to enjoy," said Tim Campbell, president and game director at Frost Giant Studios. "Our team is building a best-in-class real-time strategy game that will continue the RTS tradition of high-skill competitive play while innovating in areas such as user interface and co-op to make the genre more approachable than ever before."
Stormgate takes place in an all-new post-apocalyptic game setting where science fiction and fantasy collide. The story begins hundreds of years in Earth's future, following the near-extinction of humanity. The great calamity was caused by the Infernals—a playable alien race of demonic invaders hellbent on claiming this planet for their own. These otherworldly demons emerged from Stormgates—seemingly dormant portals that began pouring out demons during powerful solar storms. As the Infernals return to threaten humanity once again, humans must gather their courage—and climb into their 20-foot tall mechs—to save the world.
RTS fans who have been waiting for this announcement won't have to wait long to learn even more. Stormgate will be featured on PC Gamer's PC Gaming Show, which kicks off on Sunday, June 12, at 1:00 p.m. PT, hosted by Sean 'Day[9]' Plott of day9.tv.
Stormgate is currently in the pre-alpha development stage and is scheduled to commence beta testing in 2023. To learn more, visit playstormgate.com, where you can sign up to join the beta test and be among the first to play.
40 Comments on Hell, It's About Time! Frost Giant Studios Unveils Stormgate, the First Truly Social RTS
Amazing howe well they aged, and how they run on new hardware. Now it's time to actually play supcom 2, i boycotted it at launch over how it was so dumbed down and never actually played it - and i'm curious about the story now
2007 guys, 2007
We've gone from a single unit having a dozen individually tracking weapons with 3D geometry to starcraft II where marines can shoot interstellar capable battlecruisers out of orbit with a rifle with insta-hit pew pew magic bullets
Every projectile had to actually *hit* the target, it was possible to dodge or friendly fire a lot of things
a "3D"-surfaced map*, hills with gradient and line of sight blocked by terrain (radar and projectiles also).
Originally 250 units per side, lifted to 500 in a patch and then modded/unofficial patch to 5000. And proper projectiles.
* I believe the map is 2D with a bump-map to create the heights.
Sad no one have added TA to fav RTS
For me, probably
WC3
TA
SC2
RA2
For Stormgate, I'm cautiously excited.
They promises good things (coop campaign, custom games and pvp ladder/system), but including "first scoial..." and "f2p" is a bit of warning signs for me. Wondering if they will use the similar F2P as SC2 does now (free MP, paid campaign)
Tech-vise nothing particularly interesting from their statements so far. I'm still on the side that the most interesting game-tech (especially/atleast in the realms of strategy games) so far is UEBS2, running the AI/pathfinding on the GPU. Allowing for massive battles of millions of units on the field at a time. (debatably how RTS/Strategy game it is... but similar enough that their tech is cool)
I remember Total Annihilation but I never bought it because C&C was my friends and my choice of RTS.
So was SupCom the best RTS ever? I remember C&C copied the giant robot unit that SupCom had in one of their EA iterations...
The first LAN party i went to we did TA FFA with 8 players, i roflstomped them all by kidnapping commanders with transports and using them as kamikazee bombers in other players bases, and they promptly banned me from any future TA tournaments :D
The unit in question was the Desolator:
cnc-central.fandom.com/wiki/Desolator_(Red_Alert_2)
We had some effed up tournaments
"back when i only had dial up internet in the dark ages, we played lan parties of all these games offline'
Also, having now played and beaten supreme commander 2: what a shitshow. They had a few cool ideas, but the game was crippled due to the terrible changes made for consoles (drastically cut back scale, changed the economy completely, terrible level design and story for campaign)
i hope this game doesnt suck because yeah, we need something new