GoD Factory: Wingmen Finally Blasts Off

I love a good backstory, but competitive 4-on-4 space arena shootybang GoD Factory: Wingmen has one as long as they come and as weird as its name. The wild ride begins, for us at least, with Jim discovering its first Kickstarter (yeah, that's where this is going) in May last year. He noted it was especially fancy on the ship design front, and lamented that it seemed it'd miss its crowdfunding goal. Craig had a play of the demo a couple of weeks later, but the writing was on the wall.

We didn't write about their second Kickstarter, which did a lot better but still still failed to meet the target by a reasonable margin. Normally this is around when you'd pack up your space blaster and go back to your zero-g home but not for GoD Factory. Nine Dots Studio kept on trucking, eventually securing funding from Namco Bandai. And here we are, with the game now out on Steam.

It is, in case you hadn't noticed, ludicrously gorgeous in that nonsensical hyper-tech way. The ships range from upright angels to tendrils of light to masses of spikes. The structure of play is two carriers facing off, with players taking the role of their fighters. The capital ships fire on each other and it's your job to weaken the opponents' by disabling modules and defending your own. Ships are customisable, with the game's persistent progression doling out new parts.

Sadly, despite releasing a variety of demos and running a full public beta over the last year, Nine Dots haven't created a taster of the release build. I think it would serve them well as a community-building tool, something they've said themselves they direly need for the game to operate properly. If you want to take the plunge, you can grab it for £14.99 on Steam right now. Nine Dots are now at work on a "single player experience with a narrative focus" set in the same universe, as well as wanting to expand Wingmen with paid and free DLC.