With BattleTech's expansions done, Harebrained are focusing on two new projects
Dare we dream of Crimson Skies?
After three expansions and almost two years, BattleTech is just about done. The developers, Harebrained Schemes say they have one last free update due later this month February then that's the end of their current plans for the turn-based tactical mech 'em up. After this, they're focusing on making two new projects. Mysterious, non-BattleTech projects. Could it be the Crimson Skies some long for?
"Now, with our season pass at an end, HBS is going to focus on two brand new non-BattleTech projects," the company said in Kickstarter post yesterday. "Our last free update, BattleTech Update 1.9, will release in late February. After that, BattleTech will continue to maintain customer support."
If you'd rather learn that information from a face, here's Mitch Gitelman out Harebrained Schemes:
Whatever could those two new projects be? Harebrained are best known for BattleTech and the Shadowrun games, which they have a historical connection to because Harebrained big cheese Jordan Weisman also co-founded the tabletop company behind them, FASA. If they were to continue mining their own past, Weisman's dieselpunk plane game Crimson Skies might seem an obvious choice. He even once said, back in 2012 during the Kickstarter campaign for Shadowrun Returns, that he hoped to resurrect Crimson Skies. That was years ago, mind. And they could just be making, y'know, new-new games. They're definitely allowed to make new games not based on anything decades old. That's fine, it really is.
BattleTech started out a little rough, as is familiar with games from Harebrained and especially from publishers Paradox Interactive, but shaped up nicely with the combination of free updates and paid expansions. Rich McCormick was particularly pleased with the sandbox Career Mode when he revisited it in January - and that was before the third expansion launched. We've declared BattleTech one of the best strategy games too, though UGH obviously it's a TACTICS game not a STRATEGY game ugh.