Swiss studio Avancadia is daring to ask the question: What if the classical Wild West setting merged with fantasy elements? The result is Arcane Wilds, a new RTS coming to Steam early access on November 18.
According to the developers, the “duration of the Early Access phase will depend on various factors, including community feedback, the implementation of new features, and overall game development progress.” Realistically speaking, they’re expecting to continue to improve the ambitious strategy game for two to four years. The team has worked on the Transport Fever series before, so it knows a thing or two about setting realistic deadlines versus rushing forward with an underbaked game.
Though the plan is to include more factions as development continues, the early access release includes three major groups: Army (low mobility but high firepower), Colony (a crew of gunslingers who likes explosives), and Tribe (strong with magic and able to use movable structures).
The early access build launching on November 18 will include “tutorial challenges, cooperative missions with 1-4 players on procedurally generated maps in three unique biomes, or skirmish with up to 8 players or AI on handcrafted maps.” Three factions are part of competitive play, with just one available for missions. New PvP factions will be available to everyone “who has obtained the base game,” while new faction campaigns are planned to arrive as DLCs.
As it stands, the general plan during the lengthy early access period will be to improve missions, add new factions and biomes, overhaul visuals and audio, and add more social elements and even modding capabilities. As you can see, this one will be brewing for a while, but its early access launch could be one of 2024’s biggest surprises in the realm of new RTS, so we’ll keep an eye on it for sure.
You can check out its ‘early access release date trailer’ below, plus there’s a demo available on Steam at the time of writing.
For now, Arcane Wilds is set to release exclusively via Steam early access.
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