By Jim Rossignol on July 19th, 2011 at 11:00 am.
Futuremark Games Studio have been teasing that they’re hard at work on three game titles. The first of these has now been announced, and it’s a 1950s sci-fi styled tower defence game called Unstoppable Gorg, in which the inhabitants of Planet X aim to take over the solar system and destroy humanity. FGS explain: “In Unstoppable Gorg you defend our solar system from the relentless march of a fearsome alien race by sending satellites into orbit around planets, moons and space stations. Unlike other tower defense style games, in Unstoppable Gorg you can move your satellites even after you have placed them.”
There’s a teaser trailer below, which is cute as pie, but game-footage free.
19/07/2011 at 11:14 Eukatheude says:
YES!
Related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4fdX8gUMY
19/07/2011 at 11:18 Tom De Roeck says:
So this is the PC thing then yes? because they announced some consol-y type things as well.
19/07/2011 at 11:18 Wang Tang says:
Awesome teaser.
I repeat:
Awesome teaser.
19/07/2011 at 11:18 Rii says:
Hmm, must be late 1950s if they’re launching satellites.
19/07/2011 at 11:20 Jim Rossignol says:
Yes, very late 1950s, since they have bases on Mars.
19/07/2011 at 11:24 Rii says:
Oh, so reality works that way in this game does it? Fair enough then.
19/07/2011 at 12:30 Garg says:
It’s 1954 according to the roman numerals on the title screen.
19/07/2011 at 13:37 Unaco says:
It’s also fictional, so they can pretty much make up what they want within certain limits. I’m fairly certain there aren’t a race of people called the Gorgs living on a Planet X beyond the orbit of Neptune. In fact, I don’t think there even is a Planet X beyond the orbit of Neptune. But that hasn’t stopped them making it up.
20/07/2011 at 04:27 P7uen says:
That’s right, Planet X is hidden further in from the orbit of Neptune.
19/07/2011 at 11:20 frenz0rz says:
Weren’t the Gorgs those things from Fraggle Rock?
19/07/2011 at 11:23 stahlwerk says:
Unstoppable(tm) Gorg?
they already registered the enemy’s propaganda as a trademark?
19/07/2011 at 11:34 Tei says:
Gorgs are peaceful. And the fleet on the other side of the moon is a cultural agency. Gorgs come to Earth for the food.. the cooking, I mean.
19/07/2011 at 11:40 skinlo says:
The teaser is pretty awesome.
19/07/2011 at 11:47 Stense says:
This really needs an opening speech from Criswell.
“Greetings my friends. We are all interested in thefuture, for that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives.”
I really like the idea of this game. B-movie tower defense sounds like my kind of pulp schlock.
19/07/2011 at 11:52 OrangyTang says:
“Unlike other tower defense style games, in Unstoppable Gorg you can move your satellites even after you have placed them.”
A tower defence game where you can move the units – wouldn’t that just be an RTS?
Or are RTS games not “contemporary” these days? So all strategy games can now only be presented in tower-defence form.
19/07/2011 at 12:00 stahlwerk says:
I’m compelled to add that most “modern” RTSs lack a base building component, which is more or less what tower defense games are. Hadn’t there been this schism, I’d still care for the RTS genre at large.
19/07/2011 at 12:22 Alexander Norris says:
Modern RTSes have base-building. Base-building is part of economy management and an RTS without economy management is an RTT.
19/07/2011 at 21:27 Urthman says:
Tower Defense = single-player RTS.
These days, if you’re designing a strategy game where roughly equivalent armies fight each other, you’re probably going to focus on making a balanced multi-player game out of it, and the single-player campaign will be mostly a training camp for the multi-player game.
If you’re thinking of a single-player game, it gives you more freedom to make the computer enemies completely different from the player, not worry about whether the computer’s side would be fun for a human to play, and it’s going to end up more like a tower defense game or a “reverse” tower defense game.
19/07/2011 at 12:11 ketch0r says:
Tower defence yay… Because we obviously need another one of those…
19/07/2011 at 12:55 magnus says:
Replace ‘Tower Defence’ with FPS and post it regularly on the CVG ‘Forums’. Because we obviously need another post with the words ‘because we obviously need,’.
19/07/2011 at 13:01 tungstenHead says:
I do hope it plays out in 3D. Seeing as how Futuremark Games Studios managed to make such a splendid FPS with zero gravity, it would be a shame if they backtracked in the tower defense genre.
19/07/2011 at 14:49 Melmoth says:
The trailer makes about the same impression as one of the old film posters with giant robots and/ or monsters, which NEVER delivered what they where promising.
Like “Attack of the 50 ft. woman” or “Forbidden planet” which neither included scenes similar to the posters.
So it might become a good game, but I don’t expect to see any persuasive UFOs outside the cutscenes.
So it’s just a teaser like any movie trailer and says exactly 0 about the actual game.
19/07/2011 at 16:04 Zeewolf says:
Hm… that trailer they released ages ago, with footage from three unannounced projects. One was for iSomething, one was for PC and one was for XBLA. I was really hoping the PC one would be the Freespace-ish game in that trailer, but as the two others have been revealed it looks like that’s the one for XBLA. Oh well.
19/07/2011 at 17:19 FM_kingkatt says:
ATTENTION EARTHLINGS!
IT IS I, FROM FUTUREMARK GAMES STUDIO SPEAKING IN MY BOOMING GORG VOICE AND … cough … NOT … cough … GET … cough … argghhh.
Maybe normal voice would be better, eh? Anyway, just want to chip in and answer a few of the questions posted above:
- We are working on three new games. The first is Hungribles, a puzzler for iOS announced around a month ago (obviously didn’t send the news for that one Jim’s way). Unstoppable Gorg is going to be on PC, XBLA and iPad. PC is the lead platform. And for our third game, the space combat one, we have yet to confirm details including the title or the platform(s).
- “A tower defence game where you can move the units – wouldn’t that just be an RTS” A level in Unstoppable Gorg typically has a planet, moon or space station at the centre. The Gorg attack in their saucers and you send satellites into orbit to set up a defence. While you can move your satellites at any time, you are limited to moving them around their orbital paths. That mechanic, to us anyway, brings the game closer to the tower defense genre than RTS. And as the attack by the Gorg Armada is stunningly one-sided, well, you get the idea.
- Eukatheude – Yes! Unstoppable Gorg is very much inspired by that film and many others like it from the 1940s and 50s. Our artists are recreating the special effects techniques of the time in-game for that period feel. Look for the strings holding up the saucers in the armada clip in the trailer for an example of what to expect.
- Planet X. Wikipedia has more detail, but the Planet X theory wasn’t officially discarded until as recently as 1993, after new measurements of Neptune’s mass were taken by Voyager 2. In 1954, when the game is set, it was as credible as any of the other plot devices used in sci-fi films of the time. Space stuff is cool.
Thanks for you comments. Expect more news around Gamescom in August.
19/07/2011 at 17:22 Guhndahb says:
We must counterattack so as to take control of their rich supplies of illudium phosdex.
19/07/2011 at 19:52 Anton says:
0:36 looks like in-game footage.