Given the success and prominence of Subnautica, it’s no surprise that Unknown Worlds Entertainment will have high aspirations for its next project. After all, they had the money, fan support, and creative freedom to do whatever they wanted and take the direction they saw fit. Regardless, some would have expected him to go with Moonbreaker, an ambitious turn-based strategy title that could rival Warhammer in its lore and creativity.
Beginning its development shortly after the completion of Subnautica, the game was and is a passion project for Unknown Worlds founder Charlie Cleveland and technical director Max McGuire. The two shared a love for tabletop games and miniatures and wanted to make a video game that would scratch the same itch as the previous two. The rest of the Unknown Worlds team quickly came to terms with the idea, culminating in five years of development toward the idea and a new world around it.
The end result is a game with the speed and graphical fidelity of a modern RTS, but with the detailed lore and style of clash of miniatures brought to life.
We were lucky enough to get a first-hand look at said world through a digital preview event, and that half-decade of development seems to have been well spent.
In a gameplay session led by Community Manager Donya Abramo, some of Moonbreaker’s combat was put on full display to kick things off. The game begins like any other RTS, with players selecting a team of characters and units to work with during their match. Each team is led by a captain character, who wields a host of special abilities that can strengthen the rest of the team and guide the player toward certain strategies as he sees fit.
The rest of the team consists of 10 units, which can range from melee-focused infantry to range units and beyond. The goal of any given match would be to reduce the opponent’s captain character to 0 HP, after which they would be declared the winner.
Unknown Worlds plans to have three captains to choose from when the game arrives early later this year, with more releases planned as the game progresses to its full state and seasonal releases of new content. sees. Similarly there will be further expansions of the lore, each of which will be associated with new factions or different aspects of existing groups. As these new factions or groups are introduced, basic units will also be added.
Each entity would need an energy resource known as a cinder in order to generate and use abilities. Cinder also costs a different amount for each capacity and unit, making it paramount to properly manage the use of this resource.
Similarly, units can be buffed or debuffed by both abilities attached to captains or other units, they can be summoned in some maps, or even ship-bound abilities they can ride. . Incorporating all of this into combat will be an integral part of success and can also affect the variety of matches between players.
In one twist, however, the units look and move like actual real-life miniatures. Actual miniatures designed in great detail with the help of makers and illustrators, they have no articulation and they spin as if someone were actually twirling a miniature around a board during a tabletop game.
It honestly goes a long way in setting the game apart from its competition. While it might be a little disturbing at first, the image of the highly detailed miniatures spinning like game pieces is a novel one and lends itself well to the aesthetic Uncharted Worlds is going through with Moonbreaker. It felt like a tabletop game and I felt like I was getting together with friends to get sucked in to have a pass together.
The same can be said for the core gameplay mechanics. While everything presented was as deep as it sounded, it was still more intuitive than expected. By the end of the explanation and looking at the setup for a fight, I was confident that I could at least prepare properly for one game and start digging into its intricacies once I got my hands on future titles. .
After selecting a team to work with, players are dropped into an area where they can engage in combat with each other. Using cinder, they can lead units into combat with each other, giving away abilities that can be directed toward a specific target or hitting anything within a certain area of effect. Is. Once a unit is destroyed, it cannot be revived, so careful planning is paramount to success.
Similarly, knowing your surroundings is an important factor that can explain the difference between victory and defeat. Each map has a different theme and layout. Some are hosting a central area that units will be funneled into for combat, while others may have more tight sections that a select few units can take out of it.
This is also an area where the creativity of the game really shines. The atmosphere assumes a vibrant and authentic look to them, with brightly colored buildings and red dust scattered over vehicles or metal structures. Like miniatures, they give gameplay a sense of authenticity, sucking another into the experience and reinforcing the feeling of out-of-this-world being existing and detached from the player.
After the end of the match, the preview then went into the customization options players will be able to enjoy with their units. Like real-life miniatures, each unit can be painted and customized to look what the player would like. If they wish to paint each element of an entity’s jacket in a specific way and colour, they can do so. If they want to put a pink or purple bucket on each side of the unit, they can do that too.
There are also tons of tools for applying colors and grouping colors to a specific part of a unit’s paint job, increasing the amount of detail a unit can and easily do.
It might sound a little surface-level, but it was honestly one of my favorite parts of the preview. The fact that so much time and love was put into this aspect shows how much Unknown Worlds cares about this element and how they want players to have the best experience possible with their title.
To conclude the preview program, Abramo then went on to explain some of the game’s knowledge and the effort that went into making it. Working with epic fantasy and science fiction writer Brandon Sanderson, the team has carefully crafted every aspect of the game’s world, lore, and characters.
This includes Cinder, which serves as the central driver of the plot. A limited resource across the universe, groups and factions will go to great lengths to get stuff done. It involves fighting and digging for moons scattered throughout the universe that contain material, and once these moons are depleted, they break up and float away in space. Hence, the name of the game.
Captains, in particular, have an insane amount of backstories to reveal who they are and how they fit into the world. They’ll also have fully actuated audio plays for release with them to give players a better idea of how Moonbreaker fits into the wider mythos.
It also tells how much Unknown Worlds cares about the world they created and made me more eager to dive headlong into it.
Needless to say, Unknown Worlds is doing something big with Moonbreaker. It has the potential to become the next great RTS, and we look forward to its launch for Steam Early Access on September 29, 2022.
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