Arcen Games Is Making A 4X Strategy Game, To Be Released In Q2 2015

Arcen, who is probably best known for their cult metroidvania 'A Valley Without Wind' and the space strategy game 'AI War: Fleet Command', has announced their next game.



The game will be called 'Stars Beyond Reach' and is the developer's first pure 4X, as their closest thing so far was The Last Federation.

Being Arcen Games though, they can't help but put their unique flavour into this game; this time by removing units from the standard formula. Here's a snippet from their forums where Arcen founder Chris Park explains how this might work:

Chris ParkOverall, think of the populace as being just like in SimCity. For instance, you have an overall population that is being sustained by the city/empire that you are creating, and you have to house them and so on. There is some concept of position of the populace, in that building adjacencies matter a lot for reasons like desirability, pollution, access to services and transportation, etc. However, unlike the very latest SimCity, there's not a simulation of every last little individual and how they move around. It's a bit more abstract than that here, more like SimCity 4 and SimCity 2000.

The military mechanics are intended to be a seamless offshoot of that. By erecting various military buildings, you project a certain amount of power from them as certain members of the populace are employed there. However, you have to have a supply chain to support those buildings fully. And from those buildings, you can supply things like the drop ships, which then land on kind of "makeshift buildings" that can go next to enemy terrain. These being things like little military camps that you fling up -- kind of like what a US Air Force Combat Controller would do in enemy territory to set up a temporary airstrip in hostile territory, then used for further breaching.

This isn't the first time they've talked about this game though, as they teased it both in July and August. They didn't reveal many details at the time though, and the game was then known as Spectral Empire.

They confirmed to us directly that Linux will be fully supported, and all future titles should be too:

@gamingonlinux Oh yeah -- I'd expect Linux will be a launch platform for all of our titles moving forward.

— Arcen Games (@ArcenGames) November 11, 2014

Tidalis

In Arcen related news; Earlier this year, GamingOnLinux reported that Arcen Games would be porting most of their portfolio to Linux, following an announcement on their site:

Chris ParkI want to get Valley 1 and 2, Skyward Collapse, and Shattered Haven all ported to linux. Tidalis will remain PC and Mac only, and AI War’s linux port will come after 8.0 comes out in August. So that one will be more delayed.

They not only made good on their promise in the two months following the announcement, but they also extended the treatment to Tidalis, as they upgraded their games to Unity 4 and made their portfolio of eight games available for Linux during July and August.

Tidalis is available DRM free from the developer's site and on Steam, along with the rest of their games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.