Video Games

Iconic strategy game dev will reveal new title at Summer Game Fest 2024

David Kim’s Tencent-backed studio is ready for its grand reveal

Marco Wutz

Uncapped Games

After the exodus of strategy game developers from Blizzard Entertainment following the studio’s lack of interest in making a new title in the genre, newly formed studios with these people at their core have taken up the mantle. Most prominent among them is Frost Giant’s Stormgate, which followed a very open and loud development strategy. However, while Frost Giant was drumming up hype around its game, Uncapped Games has quietly worked on its own next-gen RTS game.

Backed by Chinese gaming giant Tencent and led by David Kim, the iconic former chief balance designer of StarCraft 2 at Blizzard, the studio has been developing its own take on a modernized RTS since 2021. At Summer Game Fest 2024, the team will reveal its debut game.

Ahead of the big day, however, it published a 30-minute documentary looking behind the scenes and letting the developers lay out their vision for the future of the genre.

“Our ambition is to create a paradigm shift for the RTS genre. Ahead of our reveal at Summer Game Fest, this behind-the-scenes look provides a glimpse into who we are, why we are challenging genre assumptions & how we make a game that redefines the genre. An RTS for ALL,” the company stated.

Alongside David Kim, several other Blizzard RTS veterans have found their way to Uncapped – together with key personnel from the likes of Relic Entertainment and Blackbird Interactive. It’s a crew with a ton of experience in very different takes on the genre, though they described their upcoming title as being more along the lines of classic Blizzard RTS.

Not many details are known about it at this point, though inferring from what’s being said in the documentary, there will be regular base-building and a tech tree. It also looks like players will be able to customize the set of units they bring to the battlefield for each match, essentially building specific loadouts – though these still seem to be faction-based – as opposed to choosing one unchanging faction and using the same stuff in every game.

Playtesters have described the formula as “addicting” with some voices even going so far as to say that the game isn’t really a classic RTS anymore, but a fun and new sub-genre.

With more and more games inspired by Blizzard’s classics popping up, the race to become the next big RTS is truly on.

Published
Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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