BioShock lead designer unveils fantasy real-time tactics roguelite Wartorn
Coming to PC this "spring".
Stray Kite Studios, the indie developer co-founded by BioShock lead designer Paul Hellquist, has unveiled its first original title - fantasy themed real-time tactics roguelite Wartorn, which is coming to PC early access at some point this "spring".
Stray Kite - whose other co-founder is Age of Empires Online lead programmer Shovaen Patel - has previously collaborated on likes of Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep and Fortnite, but Wartorn will be its first original release. It follows two elven sisters, Yara and Elani, as they journey across the war-ravaged Isles of Talaur - a fantasy realm "torn apart by extremism and the unraveling of ancient bonds" - in order to reach the safety of their ancestral home.
Wartorn is described as a "single-player, squad-based, roguelite campaign experience" that'll see players recruiting groups of strategically diverse fantasy creatures - including goblins, elves, demons, treefolk, and more - to their Caravan. Squads can be mixed and matched before skirmishes, with battlefield positioning, squad combos, and careful deployment of abilities all said to be key. Losses, however, will reduce morale, and it's Game Over if all hope is lost.
Additionally, there's talk of emergent, elemental-themed combat, enabling players to harness the likes of fire, water, lightning, tar, and planta to create unique tactical opportunities - with tar amplifying fire, lightning surging through water, and so on. That's on top of a physics-based environmental destruction system, intended to add "depth and unpredictability" to battles - and there's also a slow-down-time feature, giving players pause to issue precise commands in order to make "even the most complex scenarios... accessible".
Stray Kite is also touting a heavy focus on narrative, with players facing "unpredictable" events with each new attempt to get home. These are said to involve tough, impactful decisions - from who gets fed to which lives can be saved - plus "moral quandaries of violence and sacrifice".
"Wartorn challenges players to navigate the chaos of a divided world while finding purpose and joy in selflessness," Hellquist (who also served as Borderlands 2 creative director) explains in today's announcement. "We've poured our hearts into creating a game that not only entertains but also makes players think deeply about sacrifice, survival, and the bonds that unite us."
Wartorn is currently scheduled to enter early access on Steam and the Epic Games Store sometime this "spring". Stray Kite is promising a "polished experience and a wide range of units, squad upgrades, hero upgrades, family members, biomes, maps, events, and quests" at launch, with more coming as development progresses toward Wartorn's 1.0 release.