Quite a genre change for Project Hospital developer Oxymoron Games, as they've just put their Heroes of Might and Magic-like game Silence of the Siren into Early Access. Note: the developer sent me a key.
A very promising one if you like the blend of exploration and turn-based strategy, although this is in a fun sci-fi setting where you're fighting for control over a distant star system. You get to explore what's left of various planets, secure resources, upgrade your bases and hire big armies. From what I've seen and tried of it, if you enjoyed Heroes of Might and Magic III then you're pretty much guaranteed to love this I think. For everyone else: it's a fantastic start for this mixtures of strategy, exploration and RPG mechanics that I'm excited to see now available.
Check out the Early Access trailer:
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Direct Link
Direct Link
Current Features as of the EA release:
- 3 completed playable factions - Fossorians, Children of the Source, Sovereign Fleet.
- Story campaign for the Fossorian faction with 4 levels (average playtime >12 hours) + 9 playable skirmish maps.
- Explore a rich sci-fi world and discover secrets of a lost civilization.
- Collect powerful artifacts, secure important resources, upgrade your bases and hire the strongest units.
- Encounter a wide range of enemies in turn-based combat, use your tactical thinking to gain advantage on the battlefield.
- Learn unique moves of your units, deploy your commander's special abilities and outsmart even much stronger opponents.
- Level-up your commanders and crush your enemies in exciting turn-based battles.
- Available in: English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Hungarian.
The developers expect it to be in Early Access for around a year while they implement new features, bug fixes, general improvements and two more factions. There's already multiple tens of hours of content to play through right now.
Linux version seemed to work really nicely too. I'm somewhat in love with the style of the artwork as well. I'm a real sucker for sci-fi and the way this blends everything together looks fantastic in motion. Fun faction designs too. Absolutely worth checking out.
Available from the Steam store. It has Native Linux support just like their previous game.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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12 comments
Native Linux version? Hmmm, this makes me less likely to buy their game: we all know they will eventually drop/unsupport/lag-behind it...
Now, if they had a *supported* Proton version (whatever that means, I'm not really sure) that would be amazing!
Now, if they had a *supported* Proton version (whatever that means, I'm not really sure) that would be amazing!
0 Likes
This is definitely a game I'm keeping an eye on. Very high up on my wishlist. I love the art and the demo I played a while back (while a little confusing) was really fun.
0 Likes
Quite a genre change for Project Hospital developer Oxymoron GamesVery different. Presumably in Project Hospital, the sirens were loud. All those ambulances.
4 Likes, Who?
This could definitely be my kind of thing. Wishlisted.
0 Likes
Native Linux version? Hmmm, this makes me less likely to buy their game: we all know they will eventually drop/unsupport/lag-behind it...
Now, if they had a *supported* Proton version (whatever that means, I'm not really sure) that would be amazing!
I find it awful to say that... Just because some devs did drop it doesn't mean that, when you see a new game with a Linux version, it's already a bad thing come on. And some devs did drop the Proton Support too, a good support is still good support, either via Proton or native. Some devs do seriously have a good Linux support, thanks to them.
And about these devs particularly, do you have gripes about their Linux version of Project Hospital to say that?
1 Likes, Who?
I find it awful to say that... Just because some devs did drop it doesn't mean that, when you see a new game with a Linux version, it's already a bad thing come on.
Software written for Windows is superior anyway.
0 Likes
I find it awful to say that... Just because some devs did drop it doesn't mean that, when you see a new game with a Linux version, it's already a bad thing come on.
Software written for Windows is superior anyway.
Lol, ok you're just a troll.
3 Likes, Who?
Native Linux version? Hmmm, this makes me less likely to buy their game: we all know they will eventually drop/unsupport/lag-behind it...
Now, if they had a *supported* Proton version (whatever that means, I'm not really sure) that would be amazing!
Hi,
I'm one of the programmers of the game and I'd like to address this concern. You can be sure the game will support Linux simply because most of the programming is done on Linux. So Linux is not just an afterthought for us. It's the same case as with our previous game - Project Hospital. I understand your frustration probably coming from experience with some games, where Linux support might be neglected, but that surely won't be the case with Silence of the Siren.
BR,
JA
17 Likes, Who?
Para-Gliding Oct 2
Sounds being my taste.
I will though wait for test or gameplay video of one hour or two, to know if maps were developed with love to be enjoyable and a true progression (not at random).
And to know about difficulty: I like to play, to have fun and relax after a day of hard work yet full of failures and frustration, thus I don't play video games like a masochist to be humiliated and frustrated (like the trend of the "dark soul" difficulties, in which in fact IA and ennemies were so poorly developed that they don't adapt to players, and out of laziness, devs pumped up the damages of ennemies and say "if you don't like it's because you are not a true gamer")
I will though wait for test or gameplay video of one hour or two, to know if maps were developed with love to be enjoyable and a true progression (not at random).
And to know about difficulty: I like to play, to have fun and relax after a day of hard work yet full of failures and frustration, thus I don't play video games like a masochist to be humiliated and frustrated (like the trend of the "dark soul" difficulties, in which in fact IA and ennemies were so poorly developed that they don't adapt to players, and out of laziness, devs pumped up the damages of ennemies and say "if you don't like it's because you are not a true gamer")
0 Likes
Native Linux version? Hmmm, this makes me less likely to buy their game: we all know they will eventually drop/unsupport/lag-behind it...
Now, if they had a *supported* Proton version (whatever that means, I'm not really sure) that would be amazing!
Hi,
I'm one of the programmers of the game and I'd like to address this concern. You can be sure the game will support Linux simply because most of the programming is done on Linux. So Linux is not just an afterthought for us. It's the same case as with our previous game - Project Hospital. I understand your frustration probably coming from experience with some games, where Linux support might be neglected, but that surely won't be the case with Silence of the Siren.
BR,
JA
Thank you so much for your comment! I have a general question: Would you ever be interested in doing a "show us how it's done" type post about how you do your development? Not super detailed perhaps, but even just basic stuff like what tools you use, what environments you use, how you communicate with your team, etc etc... I love reading or listening to developers talk about how they do their craft, but so few do.
1 Likes, Who?
Thank you so much for your comment! I have a general question: Would you ever be interested in doing a "show us how it's done" type post about how you do your development? Not super detailed perhaps, but even just basic stuff like what tools you use, what environments you use, how you communicate with your team, etc etc... I love reading or listening to developers talk about how they do their craft, but so few do.
I'll try to briefly answer your questions. We use Unity engine, which can produce binaries for various platforms. There's rarely any issue with something working on Linux and not on Windows and vice versa, but we've always found a solution/compromise. For writing code(C#), we use Jetbrains Rider. For graphical assets, the team uses various mix of tools - Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity. Music and SFX is outsourced. For versioning we use git with lfs extension. We used to use Perforce, which is probably better suited for games, but the cost for a growing team was just too high. We're 8 guys in a single office, so communication is easy and you can talk to anyone at any time. For online communication we use Discord, which I'm not a big fan of, but gamers apparently use it a lot so it's also our main communication channel with the community.
Sometimes we publish interesting things from the development at our steam page
And I like this video, where you can see how we do the animations using blender.
6 Likes, Who?
Thank you so much for your comment! I have a general question: Would you ever be interested in doing a "show us how it's done" type post about how you do your development? Not super detailed perhaps, but even just basic stuff like what tools you use, what environments you use, how you communicate with your team, etc etc... I love reading or listening to developers talk about how they do their craft, but so few do.
I'll try to briefly answer your questions. We use Unity engine, which can produce binaries for various platforms. There's rarely any issue with something working on Linux and not on Windows and vice versa, but we've always found a solution/compromise. For writing code(C#), we use Jetbrains Rider. For graphical assets, the team uses various mix of tools - Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator, Affinity. Music and SFX is outsourced. For versioning we use git with lfs extension. We used to use Perforce, which is probably better suited for games, but the cost for a growing team was just too high. We're 8 guys in a single office, so communication is easy and you can talk to anyone at any time. For online communication we use Discord, which I'm not a big fan of, but gamers apparently use it a lot so it's also our main communication channel with the community.
Sometimes we publish interesting things from the development at our steam page
And I like this video, where you can see how we do the animations using blender.
That's super interesting info!!! Thank you so much. Interesting on Rider. I too dislike Discord, but yes it's true that so many people use it. I absolutely HATE the chat format of discord vs traditional posting forums (mainly for archival info and searching) but I'm old so I remember the glory days of forum communities.
Really looking forward to the game release, and thanks for sharing this info!
0 Likes
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