Splash Damage, the UK-based studio behind Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Brink, is currently at work on a free-to-play turn-based strategy game for iOS. Rumor has it that said game may actually be quite rad, and features soldiers that are of a similarly radical breed.
Splash Damage, the UK-based studio behind Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Brink, is currently at work on a free-to-play turn-based strategy game for iOS. Rumor has it that said game may actually be quite rad, and features soldiers that are of a similarly radical breed.
Okay, so there’s actually a double-meaning behind the game’s title, Rad Soldiers. The gun-wielding maniacs that staff Splash Damage’s game are in fact pretty cool, and will bring the rubbery, charming characters from Team Fortress 2 to mind. More than that, though, the city of London has been irradiated (Radiation Absorbed Dose—geddit?), and these bands of mercenaries are fighting for control of the banks and important landmarks in the otherwise-abandoned town.
The gameplay in Rad Soldiers is all about strategy and tactics. You move your soldiers around grid-based battlefields and utilize equipment and abilities to capture and hold important points. The game is asynchronous, so you can make your moves in several online games, exit the game, come back, and see how your opponents retaliated. There’s also a single player campaign for you to work through.
“What we’ve tried to do is take everything we’ve learned from AAA gaming and apply those lessons to iOS gaming in a way that creates something that is really compelling to play, but is not compulsion, which is really important to us,” Splash Damage CEO Paul Wedgwood told Gamasutra. “Highest on our list of values is to never knowingly exploit people with the games that we make. There really is this divergence happening right now where there are games as a science – if you can call them games – and games as an art, and we’re definitely aiming for the latter.”
Splash Damage is also taking special pains to make sure that Rad Soldiers‘ non-vanity in-app purchases are all unlockable. In other words, you don’t have to spend money for the full game experience.
“Airstrikes, sentry guns, land mines, rocket launches, crossbows with exploding bolts… you can unlock all this without spending any money at all – that’s really critical to us,” Wedgwood said. “Everything that’s gameplay-affected can be done by anyone.”
Splash Damage is engineering Rad Soldiers for a midcore audience, describing it as “a casual game for hardcore gamers.” It’s purposefully saturated with attention-grabbing color, and Wedgwood likens it to another popular iOS turn-based strategy game, Hero Academy—”but pretty.”
Rad Soldiers will be available this June, so get fitted for your radiation suit and stay tuned to Gamezebo for more updates on the game.
