Elemental: War Of Magic is the new game from Stardock, the publisher who is now famous for non-DRM games such as Galactic Civilizations 2 and Sins Of A Solar Empire.
From the official website, it is a 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate), reminiscent of strategic empire building sims, such as Civilization. Some may compare it to Master Of Magic, but Stardock had previously said that it was working a not-Master Of Magic game. I wouldn’t really know since I haven’t played Master Of Magic to begin with. However, this game does remind me of Civilization, SimCity and Heroes Of Might And Magic.
There is also a game journal, providing excellent insight to the development of the game. Too bad there’s no RSS feed for it. That would’ve been a nice touch.
The mechanics of Elemental is somewhat more involved. Most 4X games use an arbitrary number of production units to make an in-game unit. But in Elemental, the player is able to design his own in-game unit. However, the design restrictions are based on the player’s resources and research. This post provides a good description of Elemental’s design. It’s nothing new, of course, but, like I said, it seems to be a more involved process.
There is also a multiplayer option for those of you who are un-antisocial gamers, with mention of a persistent world. How will this work out? I am not even sure I understand what this is talking about. Anyway, I’m not much of a multiplayer person.
One feature I especially love, and is somehow missing from all, if not almost all, games:
I guess it will have random maps, what is the target for sizes?
From tiny to ridiculously large. We are also making a 64-bit native edition to support even larger worlds.
A native 64-bit edition will be available! There’s finally a good use for Vista 64 and 4GB of ram.
And what about its DRM?
Most important question: what version of SecuROM will be used?
It’s using a combination of SecuROM and Starforce so that the game will require a CD in the drive, a USB key to be inserted and the reading of a particular word on a particular page of the user manual (which won’t be hard since it’ll only have a 2 page manual naturally).
The docs, which we expect to be written by fans, will be online only which will be fine since the game will require players to be on-line at all times due to the by-the-hour activation checks the game makes to the single player mode.
Also, the game won’t work if you have any CD-ROM burning software including the built in media player software (users will naturally need to uninstall any media players including iTunes in order to play).
All of this will be integrated into the game by our eastern-european CD manufacturer (the copy we send there will be completely clean of course) so we’re confident that no pirates will get it…
Lucky for legitimate gamers, Brad Wardell was just kidding. But I wouldn’t mind uninstalling iTunes actually…
Elemental will be released in 2010 (!!), but the beta will start in mid-2009. This will be another game I’ll be looking forward to. It’s nice to see Stardock address a genre that is bypassed by other big name publishers. We (and by “we” I mean “I”) need more great 4X games!
