Developed by a veritable supergroup of RTS veterans who have contributed to some of the genre’s best offerings, Frost Giant’s free-to-play RTS Stormgate is shaping up to be a next-gen moment for strategy gaming. Stormgate might resemble StarCraft mechanically and WarCraft visually, but as a whole, it feels more like a blend of many great ideas from the last two decades. There are hints of Command & Conquer: Generals, Dawn of War, and Age of Empires. Each system feels familiar, yet the sum of these parts is an RTS with a distinct identity.
The Best War Games recently played a few co-op and 1v1 matches to test out Stormgate’s recently announced third faction, the Celestial Armada. This faction plays out quite unlike anything we’ve seen in an RTS, but with some practice, it allows for some equally unusual and sometimes hilarious tactical plays. It’ll take some hours to appreciate the full depth of Stormgate’s strategic sandbox, but our impression of this early build left us excited for more. It’s worth noting that what we saw is a work-in-progress beta build, so some units and mechanics are likely to change.
Frost Giant Studios Reveals Stormgate with Cinematic Trailer
Frost Giant Studios reveals Stormgate, its new science fantasy real-time strategy game set on a post-apocalyptic Earth beset by a demonic invasion.
Stormgate is Easy to Get Into
Although Stormgate is clearly a strategically deep RTS with an extremely high skill ceiling, a few thoughtful design decisions make it one of the most approachable games for new players we’ve yet seen in the genre. Whether someone is a longtime competitive StarCraft ladder climber or has never played an RTS before, Stormgate strives to appeal to either end of the curve.
Coming in clutch in terms of new player friendliness is Stormgate’s BuddyBot system, an idea we hope every other RTS game steals as soon as possible. Excluded from 1v1 matchmaking, BuddyBot is a customizable AI companion that can handle worker training, resource harvesting, unit production, and even base expansion automatically. We found it tremendously helpful to use BuddyBot to train workers and order them to harvest resources while we would manually expand our base and build up our army. BuddyBot certainly won’t win a match for you–we tested that–but it’s a fantastic onboarding tool that helped us find our way around the game’s systems. Eventually, as players grow in confidence and skill, they will inevitably outgrow BuddyBot and opt for manual control of all elements.
The UI is also smartly designed, with the QWERT keys corresponding to tabs for building construction, unit production, and research. Rather than hunting down the right structure in our base and selecting it, anything we need to do is two keypresses away. Control groups are also automatically generated, so players can press the key corresponding to their aerial units without assigning each individual unit.
Stormgate’s pinging system also deserves a mention. Absolutely everything in the game can be communicated through pings: players can ping buildings they plan to produce, creep camps they want to attack, and even special abilities they intend to use. Similar to what Apex Legends did for battle royale games, Stormgate’s pinging system allows a team to coordinate surprisingly effectively without uttering a word.
Stormgate Builds Upon Classic RTS Ideas
It’s clear that Stormgate’s team consists of RTS veterans who have been paying attention to the genre over the last few decades, as many of the genre’s best ideas are present here but usually with a unique twist. There are Dawn of War’s capturable strategic locations, but the twist is that these can also level up to offer stronger benefits. Like Age of Empires, trees are a blocking destructible terrain feature, but infantry can freely pass through them. Creep camps are scattered around the map like Warcraft, but the Celestials can deliberately “uplift” them to make them more powerful and yield more experience.
Although there are only two basic resources to harvest, one of them will “enrich” as the match progresses, which increases the rate that it’s harvested. It’s a deceptively small modification to the resourcing game that makes later nodes particularly valuable and forces the pace to pick up over time. Each system in place is overall familiar to a seasoned genre fan but comes with an additional layer that adds some new strategic considerations.
Another RTS staple that will come with Stormgate is its editor. Stormgate’s developers anticipate that players will devise entirely new ways to play, similar to how DOTA was born out of the Warcraft 3 editor. Many of the same tools used to develop Stormgate will be in the hands of players, and it’ll be interesting to see creators develop their own MOBAs or tower defense games with Stormgate’s tools.
Stormgate’s Factions Are Unique, Especially the Celestials
Of Stormgate’s three factions, the Terran-like Vanguard faction is probably the most immediately approachable for RTS fans. They harvest resources with workers, increase supply–Stormgate’s population cap–by building additional Habitats, and Vanguard utilizes a combination of easy-to-understand organic infantry, mechanized vehicles, and healing support units. That said, some of its characteristics are certainly unique. Habitats, for example, can be upgraded to Solar Habitats, which can target a nearby structure for an efficiency boost. This makes habitat placement important to weigh: should one risk placing habitats near the frontline to strengthen those structures at the risk of losing valuable supply? Overall, Vanguard is all about survivability and keeping units alive long enough to upgrade them through veteran level-ups, growing stronger with each successful engagement.
The demonic Infernal faction’s nearest analog would be the Zerg, but again, the comparison only goes so far. The Infernals are territory control experts, spreading their creep-like “shroud” around the map which affords them numerous benefits, all while infesting enemy units to spy on their movements. Units that stand in the shroud gain an extra health bar over time and move faster, so Infernals are pressured to expand quickly and fiercely defend shroud-generating structures. Infernals are also unique in that they benefit from their units dying: defeated Infernal units generate Animus which powers faction’s most potent spells. One Infernal special ability covers the entire map with shroud temporarily, another can summon a massive dragon, while another can immediately infest select enemy units. It’s a sneaky, nefarious faction, and its demonic visual theme aptly reflects its play style.
Lastly, we tried out the Celestial faction which was recently announced. We were advised to forget everything we knew about RTS games when playing them, and this was sound advice. All Celestial structures emit a cascade field in a radius that allows further structures to be built without workers, and the primary Celestial structure can also move while projecting it. This means that Celestials can expand at a moment’s notice, building an entire base at a new location rapidly. Celestials don’t even concern themselves with the supply system: they start with 300 supply and a unique power management system that is the effective limit of their output. Celestial unit-producing structures can also designate a “prime” where all their output will be sent, so one building can be dropped on the frontline while outputting the units from half a dozen on the other side of the map. Celestial tactics are complex, and it'll be fascinating to see how high-level players push their capabilities.
Based on what we’ve seen of the core gameplay features and the three factions in such an early state, it’s hard not to be optimistic about Stormgate and the RTS genre. With a Homeworld threequel finally out, a new Sins of a Solar Empire on the way, and now Stormgate, 2024 feels like an RTS renaissance.
Stormgate
- Released
- July 30, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
Plunge into the heart of battle as the ultimate battlefield commander fighting for survival in a science fantasy universe, where Earth’s fate hangs on the edge of oblivion.
Human defenders and their faithful robot allies stand defiant against two warring alien factions: a race of warlike demonic invaders and their technologically advanced angelic rivals. Together, these three are locked in a relentless struggle for dominance. Crafted by developers renowned for their work on StarCraft II and Warcraft III, Stormgate puts you in command of epic real-time strategy battles.
Fight for the Future
Dive into the ultimate test of strategic warfare with three highly-asymmetric factions: the stalwart Human Vanguard, the relentless Infernal Host, or the highly-advanced Celestial Armada. Team up with friends and command legendary Heroes to conquer the challenging AI in co-op mode, or test your mettle on the global stage in a hero-free competitive ranked ladder focused purely on player skill. Get ready for an innovative 3v3 mode, currently in development, with a no-elimination policy to ensure you always taste victory or defeat together, as a unified team.
- Developer(s)
- Frost Giant Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Frost Giant Studios
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Genre(s)
- Real-Time Strategy
