Colourful strategy game Cantata leaves early access on August 15th
Advance Wars meets Dune
After a year in early access, developer Afterschool Studio have announced that Cantata is fully launching on August 15th. Cantata is a turn-based strategy game with some production chain management thrown in for good measure, alongside the massive maps and base building. Take a look at the candy-coloured Dune-esque world below.
Cantata takes place on the surreal planet of Shoal which is in the thick of a brutal robo-rebellion, despite its sticky sweet exterior. All the bloodshed (or batteryjuiceshed, if you’re a robot?) has woken up the bizarre planet’s fauna, and it'll try to chomp at you between turns.
The full release will feature “a newly designed user interface and a fully customisable modding tool”, as well as three new campaign chapters, taking the grand total up to nine altogether. A map editor is already part of the early access build, too, so you can mess around and make your own battlefields and/or alien Venus Flytrap obstacle courses.
Nate Crowley (RPS in peace) checked out the game slightly before its early access release and said its Advance Wars DNA made for a “tactical experience that’s unique, surprisingly complex, and brutally, crushingly slow.” Nate continued that "there was a lot of tactical fun to be had... but I would have preferred to have had it in about the quarter of the time", so maybe a year of early access tweaking has sped things up.
You can find out for yourself soon enough as Cantata will exit early access on Steam on August 15th and will be available for £20/$25/€20. Although a launch week introductory offer will knock that down by 10%.