Frost Giant Studios, one of the many studios formed by former Blizzard developers, went public last year, claiming it was working on the next big real-time strategy game. The studio just revealed its ambitious project at the Summer Game Fest: Stormgate.
Stormgate is being marketed as a social real-time strategy game which will prioritize single-player campaigns, co-op play, competitive esports, and custom maps equally. Utilizing Unreal Engine 5 and custom simulation technology, Stormgate aims to be crisp in aesthetics, gameplay, and response time alike.
The setting of Stormgate is a futuristic, alternative history of Earth. Marketed as a science-fantasy story, the story revolves around the stormgates, portals which opened up across earth, spewing forth a world-wide demonic invasion. These Infernals, as well as the technological Human Resistance, are the two playable factions revealed for Stormgate so far. Though post-apocalyptic, Stormgate is not a grimdark game; the environments are colorful and hopeful, even as giant demon skulls adorn the abandoned ruins across the game world.
The RTS genre is notoriously difficult to break into, and Frost Giant Studios is well aware of that. It is planning on making the game more approachable in several ways, while simultaneously catering to competitive players all the way up to the eSports level.
One way it is doing this is by introducing a 3vE co-op mode. Players will be able to team up with two other players to tackle unique PvE challenges, similar to the popular game mode introduced to StarCraft 2. Stormgate is also adding several intuitive additions to the UI. For example, instead of selecting a worker, choosing a building, and placing it, a player can select a building from a universal build menu, and the closest worker will build the structure before automatically returning to previous task.
Stormgate will also be giving players a robust level editor. Many Frost Giant Studios developers got their start in RTS level editing in games like Warcraft 3, so it plans on maintaining high levels of support. The in-game editor will provide the same tools the developers use for players, and will be user-friendly while maintaining high levels of complexity.
Real-time strategy games have been sparse lately, but it seems Stormgate may be the game to revitalize the genre. A love letter to Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo all at once, Stormgate is a game that all gamers–especially Blizzard fans–will want to keep on their Steam Wishlists. The base game of Stormgate will be free-to-play, with regular paid content updates and cosmetics available for purchase after its release.
Stormgate is currently in development for PC, with plans for Beta Testing to begin early 2023.