'Red Conquest' – An Upcoming RTS Set in Space
posted by arn on November 16th, 2009 9:40 PM EST in Exclusives, Upcoming Games, iPhone games, iPod touch games
This week we had John Kooistra on our podcast during which he revealed for the first time what he had been working on for the past 6-7 months.
Kooistra is the developer behind some of our early App Store favorites Blue Defense! and the follow-up title Blue Attack!. Both games were set in a new universe of Red and Blue forces who were set on destroying each other. Kooistra's latest project extends this universe and provides an actual back story (the "why") behind the aggression of the two forces in a real time strategy (RTS) game called Red Conquest.
Like most real time strategy games, your goal is to build up your army and coordinate your units to maximize enemy damage while minimizing your own. Kooistra explains that due to the space setting, unit micromanagement is very important as there are no physical obstacles for your enemies aside from your own units. In order to adequately defend your position, you will need to make a blockage with your own frontline battle units. As ships are destroyed, they explode into chunks that can be collected by your harvesters, so you'll want to bring one of those along with your attack squadrons. Multitouch is also said to play a big role in managing your units via a "squad multimove" screen where you can move as many units as you have fingers.
In [some of the screenshots], you can see little circles attached to squads by lines, those are multimove handles. Basically, on this screen, you can move individual units with as many fingers as you're comfortable with. I like to use both thumbs, myself, and you get pretty good control over a fair number of units this way. It's very good for micromanagement.
Meanwhile this screenshot gives you a tactical map when you zoom out with squads represented by icons.
We haven't been able to spend any time with the game itself which is hoped to be submitted in the next few weeks, but Kooistra supplied us with these early screenshots which share the familiar art style of his earlier games.
If you've never heard of Blue Defense! or Blue Attack! before, check out our early reviews of the titles (Blue Defense! Review, Blue Attack! Review).
App Store Link: Blue Defense!, $1.99, Blue Attack!, $1.99
Wow.. This will be interesting. I totally loved Blue Attack and Blue Defense, but I'm not at all a fan of RTS games. Maybe I'll just get it anyway and decide if I like it later.
You know, I agree with you TKO. I loved Blue Defense and Blue Attack, and I'm not so much into RTS, but I may just get it to support the developer. It was pretty much the first iPhone app "series" I got into. I can't wait for this sequel, no matter what genre it is. I wonder if they'll make the next Red vs. Blue game an FPS…
OH MY GOD.
OH MY GOD! The beta testers for this are very lucky! Let's not forget how excited we all were for Blue Attack! This will be absolutely fantastic; every game John develops is a masterpiece. I'm really looking forward to this.
Looks really good. Though I didn't like Blue Defense and had never played Blue Attack, I am an RTS fan. I just hope that this is as smooth as Warfare Inc. and not like Command and Conquer.
Wegmans! One of my finest fans.
You should probably calm down just a *little* bit.
I plan to be active in the forums again, so go find the red conquest thread in "upcoming games", and I'll gladly field all your questions!
Wow, after months of being dormant, the blue/red series continues! I am so excited for this game, especially since being a fan of Blue Attack! Based on the quality I know of, Im gonna take a guess that it will be $3-5 upon release! I want it!
Played over four episodes… interesting! I wonder whether John will try using DLC for this? I think its an appropriate example of how DLC could work… And that would keep some kind of income going for him continuously rather than just a one-off payment.
Best franchise ever.
This looks pretty sweet.
Wow, looks incredible. Hope it plays as well as it looks.
Awesome, this looks like the bastard love child of my all time favorite PC RTS Homeworld and the brilliant Blue Attack both of which I think are timeless and still play regularly.
Looking forward to this one. Blue Attack! is still one of the best games on this platform, and that's saying a lot. Hopefully this one is as good, but even half as good would be better than most.
@spiffyone thank you! Though I'm not sure how to even compare all of my own games to each other – BA was very different from BD, and RC will be even more of a departure.
One thing is for sure, Red Conquest is much larger than either of my previous games, and it will only get larger as I add more story arcs to the campaign mode!
But yeah, I just keep making the games that I want to play, so if you liked the first two, you'll probably like this one.
for rts fans, I think I've created something very interesting on the iPhone – it's not exactly like the other rts app store offerings, which seem to be direct copies of the existing PC style of rts games. So if you're an rts fan with an iPhone, I think you'll be intrigued by the gameplay mehanics iv set up in red conquest.
I know this is might seems out of place
but if u make one for psp (as psp minis game)
I'll have 100% probability to buy the all of your game
Okay, I am freaking loving this game. But I can't figure out if units have an upkeep cost of both resources and population slots or just population slots. Also, the resource patches and asteroids look too similar. The whole resource collecting is kinda confusing – I can't tell if my gatherers need to be positioned differently to gather more efficiently or if resource patches start to yield less – I would love some more detail on how to effectively obtain resources. Also, is it possibly to have a group of ships focus fire on one enemy? I haven't been able to figure that out, even though the enemy AI does it to me up the wazoo. Is it possible for me to target an attack on an individual ship, or can I only sort of clump ships near the target and let my units micro for themselves? Huh? Overall, I'm loving this game. Highly recommend if you're a fan of the genre.