End Of End Of Nations: Petroglyph Returns With Victory
OK, admittedly, End of Nations hasn't met its untimely end just yet. Trion has, however, wrested control of its development away from Petroglyph, and last time we checked, things weren't looking so good. But that's an increasingly convoluted tale for another day. The question of the moment: where exactly does all of this leave Petroglyph? Not entirely surprisingly, the answer is the gaming industry's current nearly choral refrain: Kiiiiiiiiiiiickstarter. Simply (and perhaps optimistically) titled Victory, the new project is quite a change of scenery from End of Nations, trading its cotton-candy-colored lasers and lumbering mechs for good old-fashioned World War II tanks. But this is far from a heavily armed assault on Company of Heroes 2's frigid niche. Reposition your eyeball-shaped army of two after the break to find out why.
Petroglyph's describing it as what would happen "if World of Tanks, StarCraft, and League of Legends had a baby," and shorter match lengths, highly customizable armies, and team-based arena battles are the main ingredients in this star-studded stew. Troops, meanwhile, gain both experience and currency over time, allowing you to strengthen your existing units and purchase new ones. Honestly, it sounds like a balancing act akin to piloting a tank across a tightrope, but only time will tell on that front.
Encouragingly, that most Petro-est of glyphs is already showing heaps of gameplay, which - quite depressingly - continues to be the exception with big-name Kickstarters, not the norm. Unfortunately, the page doesn't do much in the way of explaining how all these disparate elements will fit together. In my head, it looks like a jigsaw puzzle that's been pounced on by a cat that despises all order and meaning. The bad kind of cat. The best kind of cat. The only kind of cat.
Anyway. Victory's victory condition is no less than a whopping $700,000. As of writing, it was sitting at, er, a hair over $15,000. It's not exactly the most auspicious of beginnings, but who knows? Crowds are strange organisms. We can't hope to ever truly understand them. They're not people, like us.
Speaking personally, I hope Petroglyph breaks down a match step-by-step or releases a playable demo. Preferably both. The pledge rewards, however, make it sound like there aren't any plans to deliver a prototype until after the Kickstarter wraps up, so that doesn't exactly bode well. We'll see, though. Based on what we have right now, are you interested?