RTS games are infamously difficult, but this team of ex-Blizzard staff created Stormgate to include casuals like us

RTS (real-time strategy) games are notoriously difficult to learn and more difficult to master — so you can imagine how paradoxical it sounded when the ex-Blizzard employees of Frost Giant Studios teased their new RTS game aimed at casuals and professional gamers alike.

The title of their new free-to-play live service game, Stormgate, was officially announced at this year's Summer Game Festival which also saw events by Devolver Digital, Capcom and Netflix.

Stormgate's premise is based around a future where a science experiment goes wrong, causing demons to pour out of portals known as storm gates, thus creating conflict on Earth.

An RTS game developed in Unreal Engine 5 and taking inspiration from Blizzard's Starcraft, Stormgate intends to lower the skill floor of the infamously complex RTS genre while providing a more sociable game for friends to invite others and play casually.

The game can be played with up to three players on either team for competitive modes, but here's the real kicker: Stormgate's campaign mode, unlike most RTS games, can be played with up to two others.

Stormgate will also have access to competition signups and match spectating within the client to make their esports scene more accessible to everyone, production director Tim Morten said in an exclusive zoom call last Saturday (June 4).

While this may entice some casual players to try their hand at competitive gameplay, Stormgate will also offer cooperative PvE as an "equally viable endgame" alternative to competitive PVP, according to lead co-op designer Kevin Dong.

But the key issue with RTS remains — its steep learning curve.

To address this, lead UX designer Ryan Schutter explained multiple methods to simplify complicated interfaces and mechanics that would otherwise have turned away new players from the RTS genre.

• Automated control groups

Previous RTS games would require the player to manually mark units as a group and hotkey them by pressing the control key and number, assigning a group of units to that number.

With the addition of automated control groups, players will need only hit a number on their keyboard to control a specific group. When a new troop of a previously assigned unit is created, it will also join the unit's respective group, thus eliminating the need to manually assign it again.

• Quick macro

Stormgate's quick macro simplifies the macro processes of RTS games, turning complex and tedious use of multiple menus into a streamlined and automated undertaking, whether it's building, training or upgrading.

Ryan caveats that Quick Macro will still be less efficient than manually managing your worker, however, hence the skill ceiling remains high, while the skill floor will be lowered.

• Merged command cards

Traditional RTS games might require the player to cycle through different tabs to see what abilities different units in a group have and activate them.

With merged command cards, the strongest or most elite unit won't be hogging all the space -—other units' abilities will also be visible, hopefully making it easier to use the abilities of all units in the group at once.

It would also make it much clearer what abilities are available within a group and also reduces the tedium of clicking through all your units to see their skills.

This is all on top of multiple other interface tweaks for readability, including default grid mode for command cards and lining up resource cost and savings.

But Stormgate also maintains that it isn't just one big skill check. Stepping away from gameplay, there's also significant depth in the lore and story it will have.

Responding to a query by AsiaOne, game director Tim Campbell explained that the story goes into "extreme and colourful territory" with "epic scope" and high stakes — players may encounter entities like demon lords and machine gods, and the story might even toy with the prospect of time travel.

"To fuel [our story] we build our universe with layers," Tim Campbell said. "We build it so there are horizons for players to experience beyond the horizons that are visible right at the start."

Stormgate's closed beta test is projected to be in 2023, but you can sign up for the beta or learn more about the game at playstormgate.com now.

Frost Giant's Stormgate will appear again on PC Gamer's PC Gaming Show on Monday (June 13) at 4am SGT.

READ ALSO: World of Warcraft Shadowlands' latest update adds cross-faction play for the first time

khooyihang@asiaone.com