Gettysburg: Armored Warfare isn’t quite the type of game you’d expect from Paradox Interactive, a company best-known for its strategy games. Gettysburg isn’t an American Civil War strategy game—it’s an American Civil War RTS (real-time strategy) and FPS (first person shooter) hybrid in which the North and South fight with Steampunk weapons and vehicles.
Think along the lines of “Battlefield 1865” with Steampunk tech and some RTS elements, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the concept behind Gettysburg: Armored Warfare.
Alternate History
The rudimentary story behind Gettysburg: Armored Warfare is that time travelers from the future have journeyed back in time in an attempt to stop, change, or end the American Civil War. The end result is that the North and the South get a lot of technology they shouldn’t have.
Radioactive Software is powered by Danny Green, a seemingly highly caffeinated-one-man genius programmer (not to mention sometime artist). Green presented a very early version of Gettysburg: Armored Warfare at Paradox Interactive’s ‘Paradox Con 2011’ in New York City.
During his presentation, Green frequently and innocuously said things like “I just coded this yesterday” or “I did this part here in last week” or “I did this while I was drunk in my room”.
Actually, scratch that last one. That was someone else.
Zeppelins, tanks, and walkers—oh my!
What Green showed was essentially a tech demo at this point and represented about 3-4 months worth of work. In its present state, Green was able to demonstrate familiar RTS mechanics—for example, selecting large regiments of men and directing (right-clicking) them to a location on the battlefield. But at any time, Green could jump into any individual unit and take control of it. (He even demonstrated a bug that allowed him to fire a standard-issue Civil War rifle like a minigun.)
In addition to controlling individual units, Green plans to launch the game with an initial roster of around a dozen land and air vehicles (water vehicles may come later)—a roster that might even include armored Zeppelins and even Steampunk walkers. (Who wouldn’t love to see a Star Wars AT-AT or AT-ST type of vehicle done up in Steampunk tech?)
Like many of Paradox’s upcoming titles for 2011, Gettysburg will also be released as another F2P (free-to-play) game backed by Paradox Interactive’s new “Paradox Connect” technology, which will serve as the backbone for micro-transactions, achievements, and other online services that will span a number of Paradox’s upcoming titles.
Gettysburg: Armored Warfare is being targeted for release around Q2 or Q3 2011, though it’s highly speculative at this point. The current 'official' release date is "2011".
[Unfortunately, because the game is still very early in development, there is only a little concept art (sorry, no screenshots) to share in the slideshow. ]
Main Features (courtesy of Paradox Interactive)
- Free-to-Play
- 64 Players per server
- 4 maps ( 9km x 9km in size )
- Over 1,000 controllable units on the battlefield at once
- Play as Union or Confederate
- 10 Unit types
- Modifications & upgrades for units
- Persistent Point/XP system and Stat Tracking
- Upgradable avatars ( Using points/XP )
- 3 Unit game modes ( Only 1860s, Only hybrid 2060s, and All types )
- Paradox achievements
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