Hands-On Elemental: War of Magic

Read our other Penny Arcade Expo 2009 articles here.

At this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, Game Central had the opportunity to get some hands-on time with Stardock’s upcoming 4X turn-based strategy, Elemental: War of Magic, as demonstrated by CEO Brad Wardell. Elemental boasts a brand new game engine and a small development team of only ten people, but regardless of size, it’s quite obvious after our time with the game that it will be a game to contend for GC’s Game of the Year merit.

Elemental is set in a world decimated by war, after several great powers caused a world cataclysm. Scattered throughout this world are magical shards containing a cache of mana. This mana can be used to create spells. More on that later.

There are 12 different playable factions of two different races, but contrary to popular fantasy belief, there will be no high fantasy. Brad made it clear to us that they wanted to avoid that motif; as he states it, “I think we’ve had enough elves and orcs.” To get away from that high fantasy, Stardock is working closely with Random House to bring players a story which will stand out among other releases next year. According to Brad, the writings of George R. R. Martin were a huge influence on Elemental’s story.

The object of the game is pretty much the same as any other 4X game; explore, expand, exploit and exterminate, as the genre name implies. But there’s some interesting wrenches Stardock is throwing into the 4X machine. In addition to the traditional conquering of enemies and diplomatic interventions, the game’s namesake (magic) is another means of victory. By occupying the earlier mentioned magic shards, the player gains access to mana, which in turn allows the study and creation of spells. We didn’t learn too much about them, but there is a hierarchal system of learning spells. The one spell Brad mentioned turns the player into a god, and makes him the inevitable winner. In a way, it is similar to Civilization IV’s space race victory; the first to research the god spell will mark instant victory.

Battles promise to be exciting.

Not only is magic a way to win, there is also a family tree system of sovereignty. The way it basically works is you arrange marriages between sons and daughters across multiple kingdoms. What this entails is, you are the true leader to your kingdom and of those whom are married to your kin. This mechanic could make some matches very intriguing; imagine you played the game as a diplomat, one that hardly resorted to violence, and your opponent was a ruthless barbarian, who took over kingdoms by force. And let’s say he takes out the ruler of a kingdom in which you have an heir. Suddenly, you own that kingdom’s entire military force along with your own, so it’s bad news for that barbarian.

There is indeed one more way to achieve yourself victory in an Elemental game, and one I thought was particularly interesting and am curious to see how it plays out: quests. Role-playing game-like quests. To get quests, one of your units would have to trigger a quest by walking into that quest’s tile. We weren’t informed of what sorts of quests would entail, but what we do know is if a player completes a certain number of quests, they win the game. I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of quests would be in the game, and as to what game could be most comparable to (King’s Bounty’s story quests, Sins of a Solar Empire’s kill X amount of enemies quests, Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword’s build certain units quests, etc.)

From the looks of what we saw, Elemental seems to be most similar to Stardock’s game Galactic Civilizations II, with “modern” updates to the formula. Some elements from Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire have seeped their way into Elemental. Most notably the Sins-like world zooming mechanism. An early rendition of this system was in GalCiv II, but wasn’t nearly as polished as Sins. It is intuitive and simple to navigate your way around the playing world, which for a game like this, is (and should be) high on the list of usability. Wardell also made it a big deal to showcase the model rendering system when zooming in. It is designed in such a way that the closer the game camera is to the world, the more detailed models appear. The main example he showed us were swords in a barrel in a town. When zoomed all the way into that object, we could count each individual sword, but when zoomed out, we could barely see the barrel. It wasn’t because the barrel was small, but because the game removed the barrel model. This may not sound very impressive, but it indeed is neat in that performance on any (recent) computers will be in the playable level.

Individual towns are incredibly detailed.

An interesting point Brad made to us in regards to performance is the Elemental team is designing the game to be playable on any modern computer. To achieve this, they employ that rendering method just mentioned above, and also the ability to play the game without the good looking 3D graphics engine at all. In its place is a board game-esque cloth map, which the game can be played with in its entirety, should you wish to do so. From the top-of-the-line rigs to the smallest netbooks, Elemental will be playable.

The entire game can be played in a cloth map/board game graphics mode.

But perhaps the most exciting feature shown to us with our time with the game is the modding capability. Bundled with the game will be the exact tools the developers used to make the game itself. A Map Editor, Tile Editor, and Unit Editor. But wait, 3D modelers, that’s not it. You can make your own models in your program of choice (3D Studio Max, for instance) and import your model into the game. This has huge potential. The ability to change literally everything about a game stands out as incredibly PC to me.

Elemental’s tentative release date is in February 2010, and it is quite probable to change, based on the feedback of the upcoming beta program. One of the many great things about Stardock is how they listen to their fan base; as evident in the betas for Sins: Entrenchment and Demigod. Combining this with full modding capabilities, Elemental has so much potential. I personally cannot wait for the release of this game. After all, how many fantasy 4X turn-based strategy games are released nowadays? The genre alone should get PC gamers excited.