Conan Unconquered borrows a familiar strategy formula but looks fascinating.
Developer Petroglyph have revealed a somewhat fascinating new real-time strategy game coming out based on the Conan franchise. It's called Conan Unconquered, and if you're familiar with the indie PC hit They Are Billions (which we fell in love with last year), then you're going to want to keep an eye on this one.
In a new video hyping the upcoming title, the developers even name drops They Are Billions when describging Unconquered's gameplay. That's hardly a surprise considering that both games see you build a base using limited resources in order to defend yourself against incoming, increasingly tougher waves of enemies. If the comparison to They Are Billions continue to hold, that means that you can expect the challenges at the beginning of Unconquered to be fairly modest. You might see an enemy here or there, but nothing you can handle with a few troops.
However, you can expect things to escalate quickly as armies soon arrive at your doorstep. It's here that the fun of this experience reveals itself. Surviving these attacks requires you to not only build the most efficient base possible, but to be able to effectively manage various threats as they arise while making the most of what is often some fairly limited resources. It's everything that's fun about a real-time strategy game but with more of an emphasis on base-building.
Of course, Unconcquered will benefit from the presence of the Conanliscence. The developers are clearly big fans of the property, but it's not entirely clear at this time exactly how they will utilize the universe beyond a few sneak peeks at some familiar characters/settings. Considering that this is the same team that developed the flawed (but fascinating) Star Wars: Empire at War, though, we're pretty excited to see how they choose to explore the Conan universe.
It's also worth noting that Petroglyph is partnered with Funcom; a publisher that so happens to be behind those upcoming Dune games. It's certainly possible they could ask Petroglyph to develop a Dune strategy title, especially if this Conan game is well-received.
Conan Unconquered is expected to launch sometime in the summer of 2019, but you can check out the game's Steam page in the meantime.