Company of Heroes and Dawn of War developer Relic has revealed Earth vs Mars, a turn-based strategy game that looks like it’s taking equal inspiration from Advance Wars and classic 50s sci-fi B-movies.
The studio describes the game as a “Relic Labs-style” project, which probably means it’s one of the first efforts we’re seeing that’s part of Relic’s intention to branch out and create smaller games alongside its flagship real-time strategy titles.
As you’d probably expect from a game inspired by classic sci-fi, Earth vs Mars takes place during a Martian invasion, which sees Martians “abducting animals and humans and harvesting their atomic essence to create bizarre Martian-creature hybrids”. Yikes.
Rather than taking the relatively serious XCOM: Enemy Unknown direction, Relic has chosen a more colorful Advance Wars-style aesthetic for Earth vs Mars.
In a slightly terrifying twist, you’ll be able to create human-creature hybrids of your own to take on the Martians. Specifically, you’ll be splicing animals from Earth together, as well as with humans, to “create powerful hybrid supersoldiers” to fight alongside the military. Space Marines look positively cute in comparison.
Relic gives examplkes like “the fast-moving cheetah-fly”, “devastating human-rhino hybrids”, and “deadly squirrel-cow infantry”. It’s a good thing this game has a cartoony art style, because this all sounds like it has the potential to be genuinely haunting.
As you progress through Earth vs Mars‘ 30-plus-mission campaign, you’ll gain access to new creatures and encounter new Martian enemies as well, including a “sentient organic weapon” known as the Creep, as well as “the Martians’ own mutant creations”.
As well as the aforementioned campaign, Earth vs Mars will also include an online multiplayer mode where you can face off against other players, plus a versus mode in which you can battle the AI and a fully-fledged map editor.
Earth vs Mars is available to wishlist right now on PC via Steam. It doesn’t have a release date yet, so stay tuned for more.
