Codemasters signs Perimeter

Codemasters has picked up the global rights to another of Russian publisher 1C Company's charges - science fiction PC RTS Perimeter, developed by K-D LAB and due out in spring 2004.

Somewhere off in the distant future, we're guessing, humanity has been forced to abandon the Earth and head off in search of another homeworld, and along the way the various rival factions of civilisation are forced to scavenge and terraform to uncover energy on resource-rich worlds so they can continue their journey - giving the game more of a kleptomaniac thrust than the usual goal of simply destroying enemy compounds.

The "Perimeter" of the title refers to a large force field which the player can deploy to try and block opponents encroaching on their territory, although it sounds like a last-ditch solution as the perimeter force field will slowly drain the very energy you're trying to protect with it.

Whatever it is though, this energy, it sounds like top stuff, even allowing the player to transform units into other units, beginning with soldiers, officers and technicians who can be morphed into various combinations to create more powerful/specialised units. Like a plumbing commando, maybe.

Codies are hoping that a dynamic range of worlds, which can quite literally be reshaped to fit the player's goals, will deliver a different flavour of real-time strategy to what we're used to, and it should certainly make for some interesting multiplayer battles. Speaking of which, we can expect to see LAN and online play in there as well.

Check out these screenshots for a better view of Perimeter.