Crazy customization, Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends influence?
The makers of Strike Suit Zero are increasing the scale of their space battles with a new game, Fractured Space, which features 5 vs 5 matches between massive ships.
The newly minted Edge Case Games, comprised of Strike Suit‘s same Born Ready folks, had this to say: “Above all else we want to transmit a sense of scale to the player – the feeling of participating in a massive space battle inside their own titanic capital ship, blasting apart enemy ships and working together with other players to achieve a common objective.”
I talked with Edge Case Games CEO James Brooksby at Game Connection Europe about, “the game that was in [his] head when [he] was 14.”
It’s probably worth laying out those Team Fortress and League of Legends nods first off. Like the latter, structurally, this (eventual free-to-play game, mind) is a MOBA. You start in your star base, the enemy in theirs, and you head off to jump between sectors of space and meet somewhere in the middle for giant space dogfights. There’s also resources to be had on the battlefield, stations to capture and in-match upgrades.
Unlike more clicky strategy games–and herein lies the stretching for a Team Fortress 2 reference point beyond pricing–there is also a skill-based shooter here as you pilot these behemoths and fire off rockets and lasers and the like.
Ships are differentiated by manufacturer, ship class and individual loadouts. The Hunter, a Zarek Industrial ship, and Sniper, a United Space Research ship, below are only medium-sized attack ships at 750 meters in length. The latter is great at range, while the former has a “blink” ability for fits of teleportation.
This is where spaceship fans can have some fun, as the team has paid insane attention (look at that detail) to these different styled (NASA-inspired, Soviet-inspired), modular ship designs wherein you can mix and match bits to come up with a ship that suits your style. Maybe something that can deliver massive damage, but only from the front, or, on the other end, something nimble. The unlocks and progression are all about play variety, adding options to your engines, weapons. Maybe the standard blink is replace by one with shorter cool down that only goes short distances, or one with a massive cool down that gets you the heck out of dodge.
Brooksby made another recognizable comparison in explaining the crew, which act “like Final Fantasy VII‘s Materia,” adding even more diversity and abilities to your individual ship, some of which won’t be completely divulged. Crew members are also part of an overarching story and lore that will change based on player input; for example, a popular captain choice among the player base, that captain could become a hero to their faction.
Fractured Space is coming to Early Access at the end of this month. Brooksby calls it, “living the next stage of the dream,” to be able to, “make a game with the people that play the game.” That is Early Access at its ideal, at least. I saw a bit of the game running with placeholder art, but nowhere near enough to get a real feel for it (though I can tell you the ship models are crazy detailed), so I’m interested in seeing what it looks like later this month.
