Etherium Preview (PC)

The teaser trailer for Etherium gave very little away about the actual game. The futuristic setting was clear, with tanks, mechs and air units all featuring a chunky, armoured aesthetic, while a single gigantic mech walking behind some tanks hinted at an impressive sense of scale.

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that this has the same style of gameplay as Supreme Commander or Planetary Annihilation, with vast battles as wave after wave of hastily constructed units are thrown into battle against heavily defended bases. In fact, it actually has more in common with Relic’s Company of Heroes, but even that is a loose comparison.

The aim through development was to minimise the amount of micromanagement you need to do. So rather than having you build and control each unit individually, you do so with divisions of units – though these looked to be around the 10-20 unit mark. Though you can zoom right in and view each individual tank, you’re more likely to be looking down from high above the battlefield, at which point divisions are represented by large models, akin to grand strategic battle maps you see in WW2 films.

It certainly gives that feeling that the entire battle is being dealt with, rather than micromanaging units, and the manner in which the battlefield’s edges are cut off and abstracted makes it feel like you’re a remote commander, looking at a holographic representation of the battle below.

With the micromanaging of unit movements removed, Tindalos Interactive went even further, taking away unit specific commands and replacing them with a small number of generic abilities. You won’t be picking a tank unit and engaging an extra-powerful shot specific to that unit, rather you have a small set of orders that can be applied to any unit. Force Marching, for example, will set any division to go navigate the map faster.

The idea behind stripping away the minutiae of combat is to allow you to focus on the wider war efforts. It should be much easier to organise a flanking manoeuvre, send units to pass undetected through a heavily forested area, and make use of the natural elements on a given map.

There can be events from volcanoes that alter the map layout to sandstorms which could mask an attack, or you could encounter NPC side factions. These all seemed to be knowing winks toward popular culture, with Terminator-styled robots, Alien-like xenos and so on. You might be able to crush them and take over the territory they hold, but you could also ally with them, performing a certain task like researching a computer virus to hack the robots and take control.

However, the most important things on each map are the control points. The back story to the game tells of inter-dimensional beings that come to a small number of planets around the galaxy and lay eggs every 1000 years. These provide such a vast source of power that three differing factions will then wage war in order to harvest as many eggs as possible and have a power source for the next millennium.

There’s the greedy human corporations, the fanatic religious zealots and the etherial aliens who need the power to sustain their quest for eternal life. The single player campaign will let you pick not just your faction, but also let you plan out the order in which you attack the several different planets, control of which will lend certain boosts and abilities to your next invasion.

Down on the battlefield, the minimalism extends to your base building, with a single main construct and control points to capture. Developing your tech tree allows for the base to grow, more advanced defences and units, right up to the gigantic mech walker from the trailer.

Focusing on your economy and advancing your tech tree will let you reach those more advanced units, but in building them, they will take up more of your unit allowance. It will ask you to make the call between lots of low tech divisions or few high tech ones.

However, the war on the ground could merely be a play, a stalling tactic to go for the second victory condition. You can obviously wipe out your enemy’s base, but you could also look to the two fleets which hover high above the battlefield for unit deployment, develop and build an orbital cannon and destroy the opposing fleet.

Etherium really wasn’t what I expected, but I found it interesting to see the direction in which they’ve taken the game. I was told that they would be aiming for a fairly low price point, when the game releases for PC this summer, and that feels about right. The manner in which they’ve stripped off the minute details of combat and the need to have a staggeringly high click-per-minute rate makes it seem more accessible, as well as quite likely to feature shorter, punchier battles and campaigns that don’t need you to set aside an entire Sunday afternoon to complete.