It’s that time of year again, E3 is here! After being canceled last year, the mega-gaming expo is back in a digital format. There will be plenty of big announcements to come but Hooded Horse, a publisher gaining popularity in the 4X and strategy gaming community, has released some announcements from the developers under their umbrella.
Terra Invicta
The first taxi off the rank is Terra Invicta, developed by former XCOM modders Pavonis Interactive. Creative Director Johnny Lumpkin presented a quick look at the strategic layer and the design of a space station before jumping into a demonstration of naval combat. Ship-to-ship combat is real-time and pausable, utilising realistic Newtonian physics for ship movements for both human and alien ships, and displaying quite a bit of depth in the ship management during battle. He also divulged information about the expected playtime of a game, which is about 20-40 hours. The combat layer looks like a lot of fun and Terra Invicta seems to be coming along nicely.
Alliance of the Sacred Suns
Next up is Alliance Of The Sacred Suns (AotSS) by KatHawk Studios. Work on the UI and military system was shown, including how the military system works on the surface of planets. Steve Hawkins, the developer and the man behind the vision of AotSS, went into detail about the logistics system, utilising nodes and hubs to connect systems together with space highways. Scout ships and probes are sent out to assess the viability of star systems, and if a system is viable, a node network can be established. The scale of the star systems, even the smaller ones, looks impressive. He also covered the colonisation and migration systems, explaining how pops can be encouraged to migrate to less desirable colonies. Alliance Of The Sacred Suns has come a long way already, we can’t wait to see where it goes in the future.
Falling Frontier
Lastly, we were given a look at Falling Frontier from Stutterfox Studios. There was much to see, as very little gameplay has been seen publicly outside of development logs. Solo developer Todd D’arcy started off by briefly showing off parts of the probe exploration, logistics systems, and the ship designer. He revealed that moons can be colonised, then provided a quick look at the research and orbital construction systems before diving into a short display of ship combat.
For his big reveal, Todd gave us an exclusive look at the scenario creator he has built for Falling Frontier, where players will be able to make their own playable maps and stories. The scenario tool looks gorgeous and very robust. He also provided details of the campaign announced to be playable when Falling Frontier launches called Titan Rising. The campaign, which will run for approximately thirty hours when complete, has the player commanding the human faction on Titan as the forces of Europa and Titan attempt to consolidate their independence in the wake of the First Colonial War. Mars and its proxy colonies take the role of the antagonist throughout the campaign.
Todd informed us that instead of launching into Early Access with a skirmish mode, he has pivoted to launching with the first act of the campaign instead, containing about ten hours of story content with more to be added during Early Access. He couldn’t provide concrete details for now but he mentioned he’s hoping to release the scenario creator and the galactic conquest-esque skirmish mode at some point around the 1.0 release. His reasoning behind this choice was his desire to deliver complete parts of the game to players as whole chapters of a campaign rather than releasing a base version of a skirmish mode and iterating on that throughout Early Access.
To finish, he gave us some insight into the universe of Falling Frontier and the story basis for the campaign. In the lore, humanity has expanded to colonise the whole Sol system following the discovery of a new resource which is found on the outer regions of our solar system. This new resource allows the creation of jump drive technology as well as materials for ships. Humanity has fractured into various factions which form their own separatist front and fight for their independence. The first planned act of the campaign will follow developments in the Sol system before expanding to other star systems in later acts. Everything we learned about Falling Frontier in this interview sounds amazing and we can’t wait to see more of it in the future.
This concludes our coverage of the games currently being published by Hooded Horse. There is some phenomenal talent at work here and we at eXplorminate are really excited to see what they have in store closer to their respective titles’ releases.
Rob founded eXplorminate in 2014 as his passion for 4X needed an outlet. You can find Rob in just about every 4X game beta and 4X game forum, too. He’s equally obsessed with the strategy and tactics genres and constantly combs the internet for new and exciting titles in those genres. He’s proud to be a member of Amplitude Studios’ VIP program and the concept creator of Endless Space 2’s Unfallen.