Jagex Announce Sandbox Shooter: Ace Of Spades

Jagex, the UK-based studio responsible for the hugely successful RuneScape, have glued trumpets to their lips and heralded the announcement of their next game: Ace Of Spades. What's that? You recognise a game by that name? Gosh, you're a keen-eyed one. Indeed, a year and a half ago Quintin spotted the indie Minecraftish WWI multiplayer, and insisted that you play it. It seems Jagex took his instructions very seriously, and now they're publishing it.

Combining a sixteen-player shooter with Minecraft-like block building is certainly a novel concept, and one that seems to work pretty well. Quintin compared the original's combat to Red Orchestra, and praised the way it balances building to prevent abuse. Now it's a 32-player shooter, and has become considerably prettier.

The previous version is now a "prototype", with the newfangled release appearing in December on Steam. But this new version is still describing itself as "retro-looking", which I think is what you say now when your game is made of cubes. The hook remains the same - it's a multiplayer shooter, but one where you can build your own bases and bunkers on the fly.

The previous version apparently saw 2.5 million installs, so it seems there could already be a fairly decent fanbase out there waiting to get into (and then inevitably complain about) the newer version. It seems this development has been done rather in secret, which I never quite understand. Perhaps they were hedging their bets. However, they seem happy enough to announce it now, including that players will be class-based, with comparisons made to Team Fortress.

Fans of the original, how do you feel? Nervous? Delighted? Itchy?