Previews Of Upcoming Arcen Titles

Work is still in progress on The Zenith Remnant, AI War's first
expansion (due out in the second week of January), but Arcen is finally
ready to show some previews of their upcoming projects for 2010.



The first preview is a bit brief, but gives you a sneak peek mainly at
the art of the very next Arcen title, a currently-untitled
puzzle game (formerly called "Feedback"). The basic premise on
this one is that it's a new, as yet undisclosed, block-based mechanic
that is fun and easy to pick up; miles away from the glut of match-3
clones. Arcen will have a lot more information on this one starting in
January and February, and most likely a playable beta in February or
March (demo for free, or full thing for people who preorder, same as
with The Zenith Remnant).



The second preview is for Arcen's next next game, a tower defense
game called A
Valley Without Wind. Even if you turn your nose up at the
casualness that is generally the tower defense genre, if you're a fan of
Arcen titles this is a preview to check out. True to Arcen's growing
reputation, this will be a title that doesn't sit neatly in a single
genre, and which pushes the boundaries of what that genre is supposed to
be (see preview for details). Most likely development for this title
will not begin until somewhere between April and June (right after the
puzzle game is released), with a release likely in Q4 of 2010.



As is always the case for Arcen, these titles will include co-op as a
primary feature right alongside their single-player experience. The
puzzle game will also have competitive multiplayer, a first for Arcen.
Compared to AI War, both of these games have a more vastly casual veneer
to them in terms of art and how accessible they are on the surface, but
they'll also both have the same level of hardcore depth that fans of AI
War have come to expect. More information to come on these exciting
new games starting in January! And, don't forget -- the second
expansion for AI War is still planned for late 2010, and free DLC for AI
War is going to continue all throughout the year!

The Zenith Remnant Now Available For Preorder!

Arcen Games is pleased to announce that The Zenith
Remnant, the first expansion to its popular space RTS AI War, is now
available for preorder.  This expansion is still in the early stages of
development, but we're making the alpha/beta versions available to
anyone on a trial basis, and in full for anyone who preorders, so that
our community can be involved with feedback and ideas as development
progresses.  This sort of open development process has been so
successful for our 2.0 version that we just couldn't cut our community
out of even the earliest stages of our expansion.

Spokes Map

Tree Map

 

What Is Planned For The Final Release?


To some extent, exactly what is planned is a bit uncertain, and for a
very good reason -- we plan
to rely on community feedback and discussion to help us build the
product as we go.  That said, there
are a lot of very specific ideas that are now on the schedule for
implementation:
This is
the list
of planned features, and you're free to comment on any of them at any
time.




As you can see, we actually
have over 80% of the planned features somewhat finalized, but then again
nothing is finalized until we
go live.  If players hate a feature, or a better one surfaces before we
get started on one idea, then
we're going to adjust our plans accordingly -- that's the uncertainty
mentioned above.




In a broad sense, here's what will definitely be in the expansion:

* 80 to 100 new ships, including:

   * At least 12 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.

   * At least 6 massive "Golem" ships.

   * At least 5 new "capturables" other than Golems.

   * Several new ships for allowing players expanded ways to control
fleets.

* At least 4 new map styles.

* At least 12 new AI Types.

* A new, neutral minor faction in the galaxy: the Zenith Aliens
(NPCs).

* 30-40 minutes of new in-game music tracks.

* At least two universal new AI ship subsystems (like Astro Trains).














Three Upcoming Golems (Shown Actual Size In Window)