Project Citadel is a new RTS inspired by Halo wars from former team and bonus programs

Recently, many attempts have been made to restart RTS, from returning to Age of mythology: Retold to new products such as Battle Aces. I am not sure if anyone succeeded, but I am always glad that fresh blood spilled at the Westwood house. What leads us to Project Citadel, a new space from Last Keep, a studio founded by former staff Stranger things Devs Bonusxp and Age of Empires Outfit Ensemble. It exposes you against a foreign empire and combines branch mechanics Halo wars With Roguelike format, which aims to support shorter game sessions, and allegedly allow vintage strategy Gambits like to flourish and hastily.

You don’t know what a “boom” is? Goodness, you sound like me before I wrote this post news: it turns out that I have been doing it for years without realizing. For the clarity of “bang” aims to focus on building the economy at the beginning of the traditional RTS match. “Rushing” is of course when you get involved in an early offensive with cheap units. Project Citadel aims to make these approaches work through a procedural generated campaign, and players move through a branched, galactic nadmap of smaller RTS meetings. The construction element is supplied by your ship -a mother that can accumulate stars, and also provide support in the battle.

The missing third pillar here is “turtling”, that is, when at the beginning you throw as much defense as possible, hoping that your opponent is in a hurry with you and falls apart on your tower (with contrast, the player’s boom will simply gain a headline in production, when you waste time on an attack that will never come). It seems that the Citadel Project does not do turtling, because you are always on the attack, trying to overthrow this empire Dang Voltari forever.

For the former microsoft and director of Battlefy Yohan Sengamalay and his colleagues, including former developers of David Pottinger and Jason Sallenbach, the introduction of Roguelike elements is about the “deconstruction” of the strategy species. “We took a traditional, long campaign and broke into short missions that matched the Roguelike structure, talks about” deconstructing “the email. “This maintains significant choices and depth, while introducing faster prizes and larger experiments.”

As for the control of the unit, “the temporary struggle maintains some resemblance to strategy games that we worked on, but with an additional fight movement and shot skills to emphasize time,” Seggamalay continued. “You manage squadrons instead of individual units, expanding what we started with Halo war, allowing us to make a game of controllers as well as mouse/keyboard configurations.” The ships themselves range from entities with rockets to hard to wear giants. Their “arrows of skills” include ramning through opposite formations, such as Buffalo herd.

As for how Project Citadel stands out from other attempts to start a new era Starcraft And by conquering, Sengamalay noticed to me that “while the species is reborn, it focuses very much around the modifications or spiritual successors.” The last maintenance is independent, only 2-10 people according to them LinkedIn. According to Sengamalay, “they are neither interested nor have resources to simply repeat the previous successes Age of empires“.

The pessimistic approach to all this is that for decades people have intensified exoskeletons Roguelike on other genres of the game – and groaned about the abundance of roguelike decks On the same pages not two weeks ago. Sometimes the combination is a symbiosis, and sometimes it is parasitism: the repeatability of the horned turane is burdened with other aspects of this experience.

The cynical reading is that I heard such a pitch before. During your stay in Bonusxp – which Closed in June 2023 for the reasons not given at that timeAmong the common cuts of the gaming industry – Pottinger and Sallenbach they worked on a server, RTS, which was similar to diversifying RPG elements, and were also advertised as they were from former Empires programmers. Published in early access in 2015, he initially won praise, but never arrived until 1.0.

Regardless, I am always interested in attempts to “deconstruct” the set format. As an older player of mythology who wears a candle for Halo wars, I hope that the citadel design is better than serving. You can read more about the game on Steam. There is no release date yet.