WARSHIFT is a new-ish game on Early Access that wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to be an RTS or an action game. So it ended up being both.
I’ve been messing around with it today and, while it’s far from perfect — the UI is unnecessarily cluttered and unwieldy for a genre that requires precision and speed — it’s still an impressive achievement considering it’s the work of a single developer.
Yup. One. Over the past three years (and following one successful Kickstarter) everything from art to design to programming has been handled by Cyril Megem.
WARSHIFT works mainly as an RTS; you land on an alien planet, you build buildings and units and you try and crush the other team. But at any time you can take control of a hero/avatar unit and fight in the battles yourself, and over the course of a campaign (yes, there’s a singleplayer campaign) those units can level up and unlock new stuff.
It’s still a bit rough around the edges (the game is in Early Access), but what’s there is worth a look if you’re after some classic RTS stuff action with a more interactive twist.
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8 responses to “Ambitious RTS Hybrid Was Made By Just One Man”
I have this, it’s a pretty cool idea – I have no idea what I’m doing in it though 😛
Quite a few games have done this, the only issue is that going into first person means you cant really control units and hence your wasting time etc.
I remember this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_%281998_video_game%29
I love this idea. I have had a similiar idea for a while in a fantasy type setting where you build troops and a village and attack other armies/villages/castles.
Imagine sending a wave to beat down the outer walls in RTS third person and then taking control of a first person character, infiltrating through the sewers and helping from behind enemy lines, then when your spotted popping back out and sending a diversion force to distract them.
Minus the stealth theme, Kingdoms Under Fire had a system where you controlled large units of specialised troops such as archers, cavalry, artillery etc.
Your main unit was purely melee and while it moved as a singular unit, as soon as you clashed with another army you took control of your hero directly in a style similar to the Warriors series.
I really enjoyed the scale of tactics that game allowed, units could change stance like spacing out when under artillery fire or grouping together when under fire from archers, You could hide units in trees to set up ambushes etc
My favourite tactic was hiding archers far in from the tree line and using a scout to draw an enemy unit in before launching a volley of fire arrows (even did the little animation where they line up and one guy runs along lighting them)
As they fled in terror the melee and cavalry would move in to mop up.
There’s a game vaguely similar to what you described called Savage. It’s a multiplayer game where one person takes the RTS commander role and everyone else play ‘units’ that can be given instructions by the commander.
Nuclear Dawn did this as well. The commander built turrets, spawn points, health, shield, and ammo regen devices using resources gained from FPS players holding points. The FPS players got support to help them keep the points they took and push forward into hostile territory.
It was fantastic. I say was because the playerbase is dead.
Anything like Hostile Waters for those of us who utterly adored that game?
These are great to see. Even if it turns out to be average you can tell how much love and effort has been put into the product. Im gonna jump on this now as Ive been on an rts binge the last few weeks. Still cant bring myself to play C&C 4 though……..
The fact that one guy made this is so impressive. Being a great programmer and a great designer (all the disciplines like 3d modelling, level design, art etc.) takes some next level work ethic.