From Namco Bandai’s official announcement, “Set in the distant, space-faring future Supernova takes an innovative approach to the multiplayer online battle arena genre by adding real-time strategy elements.” That’s kind of like innovating a peanut butter sandwich by adding jelly.
The MOBA genre is an offshoot of the real-time strategy genre, so when Namdai Banco and developer Primal Game Studio present a new free-to-play PC MOBA that spices things up by adding elements taken away to create it in the first place, I start hallucinating snakes eating their own tails.
After selecting from a wide array of science fiction inspired champions (here called Commanders), players take to the battlefield in standard MOBA battles, only with a twist. The minions spawning are determined by the players, with familiar RTS mechanics used to upgrade and deploy them to participate in rock-paper-scissors battles for lane dominance. It looks gleefully chaotic.
Players will also be able to use drops gathered during matches to craft upgrades for their favourite Commanders, because every game needs a crafting system of some sort. I’m not even joking.
Just what the world needs, another MOBA, right? Well I’m certainly up for a science fiction MOBA, and with these newfangled real-time strategy elements Supernova might just work. Anything that inspires concept art like this deserves a chance.
![One Part League Of Legends, One Part StarCraft. Wait, What?](https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/01/tejieag1iufxxajwepta.png?quality=75?quality=75)
Players can sign up for a chance at alpha access to Supernova at the game’s official website.
Comments
4 responses to “One Part League Of Legends, One Part StarCraft. Wait, What? ”
Played something like that, was nice but short
If you’re highlighting a champion and I can’t find that champion on the screen, your game might need some tweaking.
Sometimes I wonder if the Games Industry is just a Merry-Go-Round designed for Goldfish. It seems to always be cycling around, hoping we forgot about something the last time it was popular or in some cases, that we forgot why everyone stopped doing it.
Eh, I’ve registered. Maybe this’ll pass the time the same way that LoL did until I got tired of it.
I kind of like the concept… sort of like the Wintermaul Wars mod for WC3, but with heroes added in! I guess the closest game I’ve played would be Natural Selection 2, where one player controls the strategy while others handle the shooting. Interested to see how this turns out.
I remember there was a DotA mod (a mod of a mod… modception?) where one player got to control the creeps for each team…. it invariably ended up with a 5v5 all mid brawl with a horde of creeps at around the 10 minute mark. Interesting times!