Storm of Vengeance is Warhammer 40K meets Plants vs. Zombies
Without micro-transactions. "We're not trying to be Candy Crush in space."
UK developer Eutechnyx has unveiled Warhammer 40K Storm of Vengeance, its PC and mobile "lane strategy game" due out on 27th March.
It fuses Games Workshop's future war brand with gameplay those who play tower defence games such as Plants vs. Zombies will be familiar with. A beta release is planned for 27th February.
Eurogamer recently went hands-on with a build of Storm of Vengeance that included two factions: the Dark Angels and the Orks.
The battlefield is divided into five lanes, with defence and attack the objective. While placing and defending your own buildings you must destroy three of your opponent's. The first player to do so wins.
On the Space Marine side, buildings, such as the Comms, generate a resource called Redemption. This is spent on unit cards, which are bought from unit-producing buildings such as the Drop Pod, the Stormraven and the Rhino. Drag the unit card onto a lane and it will deploy, slowly marching toward the enemy, shooting opposing units until eventually firing on the enemy building.
Adding depth to the experience is a leveling and skill tree system. During a battle you can spend resources to upgrade your units, perhaps giving them the useful grenade ability. And you can switch your buildings so they generate a special resource called Resolve instead of Redemption. Resolve is used to play more powerful units, such as the hero unit Belial, and command abilities, such as the last stand command For the Lion.
The Orks work slightly differently. The Ork Camp is used to generate resource, and the Warboss Hut is used to place all units. The Mech Shop lets you create cards that can be combined with others. And there's the Weirdboy Tower, which generates magic powers such as Frazzle. The Orks have units such as the Bomb Squig, which rushes along a lane before blowing up, and the weak but versatile Gretchin, which can shoot across lanes.
The game includes over 50 missions per faction spread out over a campaign set during a 27 day period. The campaign mode is based on the best-selling book Purging of Kadillus by Gav Thorpe.
In single-player, clicking or tapping on a building pauses the action. Outside of single-player there's cross-platform multiplayer, which enables PC, iOS and Android players to play against each other. This is faster paced, as clicking or tapping on a building does not pause the action. Multiplayer battles affect your multiplayer rank and feed into a Risk-style faction war. Every 14 days players earn campaign medals based on how their faction is doing in the wider war.
As mentioned the game includes the Space Marines and the Orks, but Eutechnyx will sell a third faction, the Imperial Guard, on launch day as 69p DLC. It intends to add other factions to the mix post-launch.
On Steam Storm of Vengeance costs £6.99. On iOS and Android it costs £2.99. Eutechnyx told Eurogamer the game does not feature micro-transactions as it is aimed at the core market. "We're not trying to be Candy Crush in space," game designer Kenton Fletcher said.
