DarkZero Review of AI War

My views of indie games have forever been altered. When was the last time you played an indie game that contained the amount of content of several retail games? If you have ever played and enjoyed Sins of a Solar Empire but cried because you couldn’t play it on a laptop or that the scale just wasn’t grand enough for you, then you should pick up AI War – Fleet Command right now.
- Derek Duncan, DarkZero

Thanksgiving Special! 25% Off Arcen Titles

In celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, we're having our first multi-product discount sale on our site!   Enter code BLLR0018P to get a 25% discount on all games bought directly from Arcen through 11/30/2009.  This means that you can pick up AI War: Fleet Command for $14.99 USD, and/or preorder AI War: The Zenith Remnant for $7.49 USD!  If you live outside the US, never fear, the discount is equivalent in every currency.  Note:  If you want to buy both together, simply click the purchase link on the first page, then go to the second page and click the purchase link, and both will be in your shopping cart together.

The Zenith Remnant is the first expansion pack to Arcen's hit space-based "grand strategic 4X tower defense RTS" game, and is currently in beta.  The full version of the expansion is expected to be released in the second week of January, but players who who preorder and want early access are free to download the beta from our forums at any time.  Players who want to first try a demo of the expansion beta can also download that from the forums.  The Zenith Remnant will include around 115 new ships, at least four new map styles, a new neutral AI faction (the Zenith aliens), and lots and lots of gameplay-expanding new mechanics and content.

You can also preorder the expansion at Stardock's Impulse, although people who preorder via Impulse will not have access to the beta until next week -- our fault on that, not Stardock's.  Mea culpa!  Preorders are also planned with many of our other distribution partners, but those will mostly not kick off until closer to official release on those platforms (so, early January, most likely).  We are aiming to have a simultaneous official release of the expansion on all outlets that currently carry AI War.

In the coming month, also keep your eyes out for more information, including screenshots and/or concept art, about Arcen's next two titles.  The first is an untitled casual puzzle game with a fresh and fun new mechanic, and the second is a tower defense game called A Valley Without Wind (yes, the tower defense genre is super crowded, but we have our own take on the whole affair that we think you'll find quite different from the glut of others out there -- more info on that within the next month, but it's very exciting!).  For those who have been eagerly awaiting our puzzle/adventure/zombie survival game Alden Ridge, please note that that title is now slated for 2011.  It's still coming, and we're still excited about it, but that one needs more time in the cooker to really do it justice.

Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks!

AceGamez Review of AI War

[I]f you love realistic, complex and thorough space-based real time strategies, purchase this game right now as it is an aspiring space commander's dream.
- Tom Clark, AceGamez

The Claw - Google Wave with Chris Park

The Claw has recently conducted a massive Google Wave interview with Chris Park about AI War, other upcoming Arcen titles, Chris's design philosphy and inspirations, and the future for Arcen Games in general.

Read The Interview

Design Right: Demon's Souls

ABSTRACT
AI War designer/programmer Chris Park takes a look at games other than his own in his new feature "Design Right."  The goal of this new feature is not to review games, but rather to look at other game designs and what they do right.  First up is the surprisingly popular PS3 game Demon's Souls.  DS has gotten almost universal praise from reviewers, has sold well and has been popular with a good number of players, and has drawn criticism and disbelief from a smaller group of players.  Chris takes a look at the mechanics to analyze why those people who like it do, since it seems like such an unlikely candidate to be so massively popular on the surface -- brutal difficulty and simple combat do not often a great game make, but there's something special here.

Design Right: Demon's Souls

Gaming Nexus Review of AI War

For me, it’s a rare thing indeed for a game to move from total obscurity to a fixed place on my hard drive in the course of a handful of days... [AI War] is just brimming with innovative twists on the 4X-style RTS.
- Tyler Sager, Gaming Nexus

Three Moves Ahead Episode 37 -- Chris Park and AI War: Fleet Command

Three Moves Ahead is the official podcast of Flash of Steel, and commonly features really high quality discussion of strategy games for hardcore gamers, and interviews with industry giants -- Brad Wardell, Soren Johnson, and others.  Episode 37 features Troy Goodfellow and Tom Chick talking with Chris Park, the lead designer of AI War about the state of the game, how some of its more unique aspects came about, and what is planned for the future.  There's also a fairly good bit of discussion of launching a new indie game and how that went for AI War, in addition to the more design-related discussions.

Listen To the Podcast

Big Download Review of AI War

AI War is, quite simply, the best experience you could have with co-op or single-player real-time strategy in this or any year. It combines grand strategy with emergent AI to form an excellent game perfect for parties and multiplayer. It is easily worth double the price that the developer is selling it at, and anyone with any affinity or taste for strategy games should not miss it. It may be daunting at first, but an excellent tutorial and amazing gameplay mechanics alleviate this into a game that almost anyone can - and should - play.
- James Murff, Big Download

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)

AI War 25% Off Sale!

Get AI War on your platform of choice! Direct2Drive (UK link) and Stardock's Impulse have joined Steam in our 25% off promotion, available for a limited time. The Steam and Direct2Drive sales end on the 27th, and the Impulse sale ends on the 26th.

IncGamers AI War Diary

IncGamers has been keeping an AI War co-op diary chronicling some recent games with players who are fresh out of the tutorials.

Read part 1 here
Read part 2 here

Co-Optimus Review of AI War

[AI War] manages to propel the RTS genre forward and beyond its usual trappings with an innovation that is so simple it’s amazing it hasn’t been done previously, while still managing to keep the spirit of those classic RTS games alive.  Best of all, it does so with one key element in mind: co-op is not just a bullet point on a box, but a way of designing, creating, and playing games.
-Jason Love, Co-Optimus

AI War on Fidgit

Just a heads up that Tom Chick has posted a small piece on Fidgit (the SyFy.com gaming blog) noting the new features, and availability via Steam etc.
http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/10/sci-fi_strategy_game_ai_war_ac.php

Well done on getting the game out to Steam and the other digital distributions, I hope the game sells a bundle and the community here expands exponentially. Top work Chris, and all the folks at Arcengames!

AI War 2.0 (Achievements, Leaderboards, Steam and Direct2Drive!)

Arcen Games is very pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 2.0, which marks the culmination of our long-running post-release overhaul. To see just how epic this journey has been, take a look at this: AI War 2.0 vs. 1.0, A Retrospective. The cumulative post-release notes, included near the end, are literally novella-length (46,573 words). That's how much has changed in the since our initial release.
You can download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to get the latest patch.  

Achievements

High Scores

AI War Comes To Steam and Direct2Drive!
Direct2Drive and Steam join Impulse and GamersGate in offering AI War-- be sure to check them out! The Steam version includes online leaderboards and Steam achievements (other versions are all local-only for those features). If you've previously purchased your copy of AI War from another platform and would like to activate it on Steam to get those features, you will be able to do so in the near future. In celebration of the release of 2.0, AI War is also going to be 25% off at Steam through Oct. 27th -- and look for similar sales at other partners very soon.
   
Many Updates:
- New local high scoreboards for everyone, and online high scoreboards through Steam.
- 129 Achievements, which can be logged locally and/or through Steam.
- Player ships can now be assigned preferred target types, which greatly increases tactical control.
- A number of co-op-related interface improvements: see allied resources, more informative gifting lists, etc.
- Several new visual effects: smoke trails and sparking for damaged ships, etc.
- Much improved (or entirely replaced) graphics for over 50 different ships.
- Ships now accelerate and decelerate when moving, making them much more graceful.
- New Collision Priorities make placement of larger/fixed ships in a group of smaller mobile ships much easier.
- Players can now select multiple AI Modifiers at once in the lobby. Turrets have been rebalanced and made more distinct and interesting.
- Custom planet name lists can now be used for those who don't like the random names.
- Networking improvmeents.
- Many other bugfixes and balance tweaks.
The above list is just a sampling of what has changed since 1.301, however, so be sure to check out the full release notes to see everything. And remember, to see everything since 1.0, see this: AI War 2.0 vs. 1.0, A Retrospective.

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As an added note, if you are a player who is is unable to install patches for whatever reason (this is usually a windows issue), you can download the patch files through the following link: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1000To2000.zip

Then unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI War\ unless you specified something else).  Please make sure that your unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.  This is a cumulative update, so as long as you have at least version 1.000 of the game installed, this will update you to the latest version (2.000) without any issues.

This update now available for Impulse customers.

For existing GamersGate customers, you can always upgrade your copy from the "Check For Updates" link in the game just like customers from our direct site can.  The latest version of the installer will also be coming to GamersGate, but that will affect new customers only.

Co-Optimus Interview With Chris Park About AI War

Co-Optimus interviews Chris Park, the developer of AI War, about the game in general but of course the co-op aspects in particular.  Park is a huge proponent of co-op in general in gaming, so was very excited to have an interview that focused so heavily on those aspects, which are often just a minor bullet point in a long list of other topics discussed.

Read The Interview