Stormgate, the new RTS from a team of Starcraft veterans at Frost Giant Studios, held its first pro level esports event in late December. This 25-minute showmatch provides one of the clearest looks at the game anyone has had to date.
The match is between Starcraft pros TLO and MaNa. MaNa was playing as the Infernals, a race that plays very similarly to the Zerg. TLO played Vanguard, who are similar to Starcraft’s Terrans. The map was Secluded Grove, a classic Starcraft-style hedge maze with resources placed at the centre and the four points of the compass.
Every part of this Stormgate showmatch is built to appeal to fans of not just Starcraft, but also Warcraft 3. You can see in the early game that though the immediate base-building tactics are right out of Starcraft, the creep and expansion game is almost identical to that of War3. There’s immediate familiarity in the strategies in play too — neither MaNa nor TLO go for a rush play, instead choosing early game harassment plays to hamper resource gain. MaNa uses this strategy effectively to take a couple of quick wins early on.
By the eight-minute, the game is really kicking off, with both players clashing over expansions. At 12 minutes, MaNa makes his first big move, attacking TLO’s third base with a sizeable army as a distraction. While TLO is busy trying to hold him off, MaNa sends harassment units to pick off resource gatherers at TLO’s main base. It works. Caught off guard and taking sizeable losses, TLO concedes and MaNa takes the game.
The showmatch then moves into a second game on a wide-open desert map called Jagged Maw. You can watch the full thing in the embedded video above.
What this show match communicates to me is that Stormgate is more or less exactly what Starcraft fans want, which is more, but also less. It doesn’t feel like it’s quite as fast as SC2, or quite as heavy on the micro. Throwing it back to SC1 is a wise move — many fans still consider it the better game.
Stormgate itself is still currently in closed beta. You can get access to the game by backing it on Kickstarter. Though the project has been well and truly funded — Frost Giant asked for $149,193 AUD to get it made, and fans have currently pledged almost $2.7 million AUD — it still has 21 days to go. Frost Giant’s FAQ page says it plans to put the game into Early Access on Steam in 2024, so keep your ear to the ground for that one. The game will be free-to-play when it launches, though it’s not yet clear how Frost Giant plans to monetise it post-launch.
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