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)