Stormgate, one of very few games trying to revive the RTS genre, has kicked off a Kickstarter funding campaign with a very informative pitch video. The campaign reached its modest $100,000 goal in 15 minutes, and went on to clear most of its stretch goals.
The video in question has many key developers whose names should be familiar to anyone who played Warcraft or Starcraft.
Stormgate is developed by Frost Giant, a studio made up of many former Blizzard developers, alongside others from Riot Games, and the competitive RTS scene. Stormgate is a sci-fi fantasy universe with an evolving story and key heroes.
Frost Giant wants to build a game on what the developer calls four Cs; campaign, co-op, custom games, and competitive gameplay. The studio is promising a classic story campaign, three-player co-op, 1v1/3v3, as well as a custom editor built right into the client.
While the core game will be free-to-play, you’ll need to pay for various bits of Stormgate to access them. In order to deliver on its ambitious goals, Frost Giant has developed a custom tech based on Unreal Engine 5 it’s calling SnowPlay.
The engine allows Stormgate to support thousands of units on screen without sacrificing game responsiveness. The tech relies on a simulation speed of 64Hz, but perhaps more impressively is that its multiplayer features rollback netcode.
Rollback is most commonly associated with fighting games, as the revolutionary tech allows for smooth network play even under high latency. Now, the same rollback netcode that makes Street Fighter 6 one of the best-feeling fighting games online, the one every major fighting game developer has been working to implement into their games will arrive in this next-gen RTS. SnowPlay is also capable of genre staples such as hot join, reconnect, replays, mass spectating, and a maximum of 32 players in the same game.
Taking part in the crowd-funding campaign will get you access to the upcoming beta, as well as a variety of other content/perks, depending on the tier. An early access release date has yet to be announced.