Blackbird Interactive announce HARDSPACE: SHIPBREAKER

Blackbird Interactive have announced the second game they have in development, alongside Homeworld 3. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a game where you salvage old spaceships, cutting them into pieces to gain resources.

If the game sounds vaguely familiar, it appears to be because Blackbird have recycled the idea from their first-developed game, Hardware: Shipbreakers. That game was a real-time strategy where the player salvaged crashed starships strewn over the surface of a desert planet. The game eventually transformed into Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, which retained the shipbreaking idea as a minor side-plot.

Shipbreaker will pick up on the idea but from a first-person perspective, in an original universe. The game appears to be a survival sim not dissimilar to titles like Subnautica, but with a somewhat more cynical edge.

The game will be published by Focus Home Interactive and will be developed on Steam Easy Access before final release.

A History of Homeworld Part 3: The Anomaly in the Desert

In this series celebrating the franchise's twentieth anniversary (and the recent announcement of Homeworld 3), I look at the background lore of the critically-acclaimed Homeworld series of video games. This instalment covers the events of the prequel game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, and contains spoilers for that title.

A map of the territory covered by Operation Khadiim, 1110 KDS.

In the year 1073 of the Kharakian Dating System, the Daiamid, the ruling council of the Northern Coalition, was given news most stark. The planet was dying. The oceans were drying up much faster than previously suspected, the desert was advancing on every front and the natural aquifers needed to grow crops were failing. In less than three centuries, Kharak would become inhospitable to Kushan life.

The Daiamid kept this news to themselves (to the point of quashing independent scientific reports hinting at the same), even as they began debating what action to take. For decades, the kiithid had been struggling with another scientific revelation, one made by geneticists from Kiith S’jet. DNA scans had revealed that the Kushan people had absolutely nothing in common with the native species of Kharak, with the very genetic makeup of the planet being unable to give rise to advanced, intelligent life. The evidence suggested instead that the Kushan people had come to Kharak from elsewhere, another world altogether. 

The Xenogenesis Theory proved controversial, especially as it seemed to back up the religious fundamentalist view that the kiithid had been banished to Kharak for committing a sin among the heavens. But it also now hinted at an escape route: if the Kushan had come to Kharak from another world, then, if that world still existed, they could return the same way. The Daiamid turned their attention to the metallic debris rings circling Kharak, believing that they might be remnants of whatever spacecraft were used to bring their ancient ancestors to the planet. If they could learn more, they might find a way of escaping the planet before the end.

Kiith S’jet, always the most scientifically vigorous of the kiith, turned its full attention to the task. Pieces of the orbital debris had been studied for decades, leading to massive breakthroughs in fabrication techniques and technological development. The kiith constructed an advanced orbital satellite network, Project Viin Cal (named for the ancient Kushan god of hunters), which was to scour Kharak’s orbital space outwards for millions of kilometres for the slightest hint of the technology that brought the Kushan to Kharak. The system went online in the year 1100 KDS.

For six years the satellites scoured near-Kharak space and found very little: some more debris, but nothing that would lead to a major breakthrough. The scientists grew more frustrated even as they felt time running out for their world.

In 1106 KDS, one of the Viin Cal satellites malfunctioned and spun off its axis, its scanning field turning to encompass Kharak. A technician named Leykab Jaraci was tasked with bringing the satellite under control. After struggling with the recalcitrant satellite for hours, Jaraci regretfully gave the order for the satellite to self-destruct. He then ran the last scan from the satellite.

The results briefly overwhelmed the data processing systems in mission control. Not just single pieces of metallic debris, but huge signals had been detected, larger than entire Kushan sandcrawlers or desert carriers. These signals did not come from space, but from the Great Banded Desert, from Kharak itself. And, at the end of the scattering of signals, deep in the heat of the desert, was one huge signal which was generating energy readings on a par with Kharak’s sun. Leykab Jaraci became, in Kharak’s scientific community at least, a superstar and his name was given to his discovery: the Jaraci Object. But as the scale of the signals became clear, it gained another: the Primary Anomaly.

The wreck of the carrier Ifriit Naabal upon its discovery at Hell's Gate.

Operation Skaal Brii
The Daiamid met in emergency session. The Primary Anomaly and the associated signals gave them a hope beyond anything they’d felt before, not just for breadcrumbs of ancient technology that might allow them to reach the stars, but possibly semi-intact technological items and maybe even well-preserved examples of the ships that brought their ancestors to Kharak in the first place!

Reaching the Primary Anomaly was going to be difficult. The location of the object was deep in the Great Banded Desert, thousands of kilometres from the nearest suitable landing site. Long-range aircraft might reach the site but would not be able to touch down. Even worse, the location was within the range of territory occupied by the desert raiders of Kiith Gaalsien. Any attempt to buzz the area with aircraft might lead them straight to the Anomaly.

The Gaalsien had retreated from the north at the height of the Heresy Wars, but they had not died out. Instead they had set up new bases of operations in the highlands of the Great Banded Desert, particularly the Beladin Formation, Sarathi Basin and Garaaki Highlands. Somehow, despite the unrelenting heat and hostility of the lands, they had prospered. Their technology had improved dramatically and they had mastered hover technology, allowing their vehicles to float above the particulate matter and sandstorms that confounded Coalition military forces.

The Gaalsien now presented a formidable military threat to the Coalition. In 1075, Kiith Naabal and Kiith Soban lured the Gaalsien into attacking the Stormbreaker Wall and then outflanked and ambushed the attacking force in the Night of Fiery Daggers (Siifar Kor’shesh). Ten thousand Gaalsien troops died in the battle, with no quarter given. The threat of the Gaalsien had been reduced for a generation, but it had also awoken a fierce hatred in the Gaalsien for the Coalition, and a yearning for vengeance.

After much discussion, the Daiamid agreed to launch an expedition to find the Primary Anomaly. The Ifrit-class heavy carrier Ifriit Naabal was adapted for a long-range, deep-desert mission using silent running to reach the Anomaly undetected. The Northern Coalition Military Council (NCMC) offered severe objections to the mission, noting that the Ifrit-class was old and outdated, and the few remaining carriers were being retired in favour of a new design, the in-development Sakala-class deep desert carrier. In particular, the Ifriit-class was not designed for long-distance missions far away from resupply for months at a time. They argued for patience and the adaptation of the new Sakala-class design for the mission.

They were overruled and the Ifriit Naabal was launched mere months after the discovery of the Primary Anomaly. With a complement of 1,256 and commanded by the capable Captain Deckhard Naabal and first officer Lt. Jacob S’jet, the Ifriit Naabal set out with high hopes for success.

All contact with the Ifriit Naabal was lost less than a month after launch. Attempts to locate the carrier from the air failed, and it was unclear if the carrier had been lost to accident or Gaalsien action. The NCMC after-action report was scathing, reiterating the point that the Ifrit Naabal was not suitable for the mission it had been given and blaming the loss of 1,256 personnel on impatience and lack of strategic planning.

A second mission was put into the planning stages, but this time it was going to be done with greater care, detail and planning.

The Gaalsien did not accommodate these plans. 

The carrier Kapisi departing Epsilon Base.

Operation Khadiim
The Sakala-class deep desert carrier was a formidable machine. Bigger and much more heavily armoured than the Ifriit-class, with a complement of 1,850 souls, the Sakala-class was designed to operate continuously without resupply and away from home port for months at a time. The original design had been for a spearhead force capable of punching through to the Gaalsien heartlands located several thousand kilometres to the south of the northern highlands, close to Kharak’s functionally uninhabitable equatorial band, but as it turned out this was just what was needed to reach the Primary Anomaly.

The taskforce would comprise five carriers: Kiith Siidim’s Sakala; Kiith S’jet’s Kapisi, Kiith Naabal’s Fiiskire (to replace the lost Ifrit Naabal), Kiith Hraal’s Akalon and Kiith Soban’s Amida. With each carrier capable of building its own attack tanks, aircraft and resource gatherers in the field, this was a colossal military force capable of handling anything the Gaalsien could throw against it.

Unfortunately, the plan required the carriers to be built and actually launched. The Gaalsien forestalled this plan by launching a steadily escalating series of offensives starting in 1107 KDS and continuing into 1110. Coalition Intelligence concluded that the Gaalsien had somehow intercepted plans regarding Operation Khadiim – or perhaps from the earlier Ifriit Naabal expedition – and were aware that a new operation would be launched to find the Primary Anomaly. One saving grace was that the Gaalsien had not located the Anomaly themselves, with satellite coverage continuing to show the area was free of Gaalsien occupation.

NCM Command ordered that the mission launch date was to be brought forwards by three months, but the contributing kiithid had already gone into overdrive to finish the carriers early. The Sakala was launched first and had already proven itself in several combat operations before the Kapisi rolled off the production line. The Fiiskire, Akalon and Amida were still not complete when the Gaalsien launched their main offensive in 1110 KDS, striking hard against the Stormbreaker Wall and the fortified main defensive wall surrounding the three primary NCM field bases: Charlie, Epsilon and Juno. Kapisi had to prove itself under fire as it fled the destruction of Epsilon Base and had to undergo its final desert refit at the Boneyard military base even as the installation came under attack.

Fortunately, the Gaalsien offensive had limited resources and, when part of the attacking force breached the Stormbreaker Wall and opened an attack vector to Tiir itself, they chose to focus on exploiting that advantage. In the chaos, both the Kapisi and Sakala were able to slip past their lines and begin the long journey into the Great Banded Desert. 

Tiir, capital city of the Northern Coalition, under attack by Gaalsien forces.

The two carriers rendezvoused at a point east of Cape Wrath, known as Hell’s Gate. Here they beheld a sobering sight: the wreck of the Ifriit Naabal. The carrier had been overcome by the desert sands during a superstorm that had wracked the planet for thirteen days. If had foundered barely a hundred kilometres from the edge of Coalition territory.

The two carriers planned to head east, holding a course north of the Beladin Formation and Garaaki Highlands before swinging quickly south to the Primary Anomaly. This would allow them to avoid most of the worst desert heat and the heart of Gaalsien territory. However, this plan was interrupted by intelligence gleaned from the Ifriit Naabal which identified a key point of interest at the “Kalash Site,” located due south in the Sarathi Basin. The Kapisi diverted to the site and discovered it to be a vast, wrecked spacecraft of unknown origin. Analysis of the wreck revealed many technological innovations to the Kapisi crew, who began retrofitting their carrier with the new technology. It also became clear to the crew that these wrecks were scattered all through the desert, and were the source of the Gaalsien’s technological advancement.

The Kapisi and Sakala turned east and punched through the Gaalsien lines, whilst news from the home front became direr: the Gaalsien main army had reached Tiir and launched a massive assault on the capital. The carriers then made a surprising discovery: a group of starships that had apparently materialised partially inside solid rock. Salvaging Gaalsien intelligence files, the Kapisi crew discovered evidence of “quantum waveforms,” a theoretical method of faster-than-life travel through a medium known as “hyperspace.” The alien ships had been traversing through hyperspace in the vicinity of Kharak when they had been forcibly dragged out of hyperspace near the planet, or in this specific case, inside it. The Kapisi crew realised that the Primary Anomaly might be the source of the hyperspace interference.

Unfortunately, during its offensive the Gaalsien managed to recover intelligence from Epsilon Base pinpointing the coordinates of the Primary Anomaly. The K’Had Sajuuk, the supreme religious leader of the Gaalsien, took a large fleet and made for the Anomaly, and would arrive weeks before the Coalition forces could reach the site.

The Coalition carriers passed through the Whispering Gallery, a long canyon in the Garaaki Highlands and an effective shortcut to the open desert beyond. Hounded by Gaalsien forces all the way, they eventually reached the flat Khashar Plateau, an effective natural runway which allowed resupply aircraft to land from Tiir. During this operation, Kiith Siidim betrayed its Coalition partners by ordering the Sakala to shoot down the resupply craft bound for the Kapisi, to try to starve it of resources. The Siidim, whose religious extremism from the Heresy Wars was not as moderated as first thought, believed that it was their destiny to find the Primary Anomaly and use to ascend to the stars…alone.

Fortunately, the Kapisi was able to recover enough material from the crashed craft to press on. The upgrades the carrier had installed from the alien wrecks also made it superior in battle to the Sakala. The Kapisi trapped the Sakala and destroyed it at Torin Crater.

It was also discovered that Lt. Jacob S’jet from the Ifriit Naabal had been imprisoned by the Gaalsien instead of being killed four years earlier. He had escaped and made his way to a wrecked ship in Torin Crater. Here he discovered that the ship had launched an orbital weapons platform before it had been pulled down to the planet’s surface by the Primary Anomaly’s quantum and gravimetric forces. Using the barely-functioning control systems on the ship, he was able to active the orbital platform, which now fired on any ground vehicle near the Anomaly, forcing the Gaalsien forces to retreat. This allowed the Coalition forces to regroup and reach the Anomaly.

At the same time, word came from Tiir of a great victory. The Gaalsien forces had erred in engaging in street-to-street fighting in the capital, as they had gotten bogged down in a war of attrition they could not win against the numerically superior Coalition forces, which had regrouped and counter-attacked. Tiir had been liberated and the Gaalsien forces thrown back in disarray.

Rachel S'jet becomes the first Kushan to lay eyes on Khar-Toba for almost twenty-nine centuries.

The Kapisi reached the Anomaly and discovered it to be a wrecked spacecraft far larger than any other they had discovered. Rachel S’jet, the expedition’s chief science officer, scanned the wreck and discovered the ruins of a vast city sprawling around the craft. Khar-Toba, the First City of Kharak. The legends were real.

In order to reach the Anomaly, the Kapisi had to deactivate the weapons platform (lest it fire on them). Once the Gaalsien realised this, they attacked in force. A final battle at Khar-Toba took place, but Rachel was able to fine-tune the platform to emit much narrower-beam blasts. In concert with the Kapisi’s augmented weapons, they were able to destroy the K’Had Sajuuk and end the threat from the Gaalsien.

The war had been costly, with tens of thousands of lives lost and the walls of Tiir breached. But the Coalition – battered by war and internal dissent with the Siidim (who now, weakly, proclaimed that the Sakala had been acting without their authority) – had won, and now beheld its prize. Khar-Toba was vast, sprawling for hundreds of square kilometres around the wrecked ship. It would take years to survey and explore the site. With the Gaalsien neutralised, resupply posts were established and soon scientific and archaeological teams were swarming over the site. The technology they recovered resulted in a near-overnight generational jump forward in Kharak’s knowledge and ability.

But far greater discoveries were to come.

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Developers tease new HOMEWORLD project

Blackbird Interactive and Gearbox have teased a new project set in the Homeworld universe.

Relic Entertainment originally released the pioneering 3D real-time strategy game Homeworld in 1999. It was followed by stand-alone expansion Homeworld: Cataclysm (from Relic and Barking Dog Studios) in 2000 and Homeworld 2 (from Relic alone) in 2003.

After a lengthy period where the rights to the IP were in flux, Gearbox purchased the rights in 2015 and issued Homeworld Remastered, a huge and fundamental updating of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 to modern standards. Blackbird Interactive, a new developer made up of many of the original Relic team who developed the first two game, released the well-received, ground-based RTS prequel Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak in 2016.

The source code for Homeworld: Cataclysm has been lost, preventing a similar updating, but GoG have reissued the game with patches to help it work on modern systems under the name Homeworld: Emergence.

Based on the single promo image issued (a shot of the galactic core of the Homeworld galaxy), the new project appears to be space-based and may be the long, long-rumoured Homeworld 3. Further information is expected to be unveiled at the PAX event on 30 August, where Gearbox will have a presentation which will also reveal more information on their forthcoming game, Borderlands 3.

Wertzone Classics: Homeworld Remastered

Over sixty years ago, the Kushan people of the desert planet Kharak made a remarkable discovery: a vast, wrecked starship in the desert, and around it the ruins of a four thousand-year-old city. The Kushan confirmed what their scientists and geneticists had long suspected: they were not native to Kharak. They had come from somewhere else in the galaxy. Using technology reverse-engineered from the wreck, a hyperspace core located in its ruins and a Guidestone emblazoned with a curious map, the Kushan have built a vast starship. Their mission is simple: to find their true homeworld.

Originally released in 1999 as the debut title from Relic Entertainment, Homeworld was a video game way ahead of its time. Featuring a remarkable 3D, real-time graphics engine and a gripping storyline, the game told the story of an entire people racing to find their way home, hounded by enemies they don't understand and accused of crimes their ancestors committed millennia earlier. It was followed by two successors, Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000) and Homeworld 2 (2003), but Relic was bought out by Sega and switched to making Warhammer 40,000 games (namely the popular Dawn of War series) and, later, the WWII Company of Heroes series. The Homeworld IP, left behind with dying publisher THQ, was forgotten about.

Or so it seemed. By 2015 THQ had gone bust and the Homeworld IP had been bought by FPS titans Gearbox, several members of whom were massive fans of the original game. Helpfully, many of the team who made Homeworld and Homeworld 2 had left Relic to set up their own studio, Blackbird Interactive, and had begun making their own strategy game which was basically as close to Homeworld as they could get without violating copyright. Gearbox teamed up with Blackbird to retool that game as an official Homeworld game - the excellent Deserts of Kharak - and also fully remaster the original games into a new package, fit for modern gamers.

Homeworld Remastered is the result. This re-release combines Homeworld and Homeworld 2 into one package and significantly updates both titles. Homeworld has been moved into the superior Homeworld 2 engine, given a massive graphical face-lift and had its user interface revamped. The result is nothing short of a revelation: a game that plays identically to how it did in 1999 but with cutting-edge graphics. Pushed to the maximum and played on a 4K monitor and graphics card, it's possible that Homeworld Remastered is the most graphically jaw-dropping game currently in existence. Not bad for a franchise not far off from entering its third decade.

If you haven't played any of the Homeworld games before, an in-depth tutorial explains the basics. Your Mothership is your headquarters and base (stationary in the first game, mobile in the second one), from where you build fighters, capital ships, probes and asteroid-mining craft. Your resource gatherers mine asteroids and gas clouds for resources allowing you to build ships and research new technologies.

The game is controlled from a 3D perspective, with you giving ships orders on where to move and how to engage the enemy. Your ships can move in all directions, including attacking from above or below to surprise the enemy, and several story missions in fact depend on you attacking from outside the usual plane. You can amass your fleet in strike groups of mixed types of craft: the AI is good enough that when you click on an enemy fleet, your ships will engage the appropriate enemy craft (so fighters will target bombers, bombers will target heavy capital ships, battlecruisers will target everyone etc). You can also pause the game and issue orders whilst paused if the action gets too hectic (as it invariably does).

The fleet you build is persistent through the game, so all the units that survive one mission will automatically show up at the beginning of the next one. Your resources are also persistent, so you start each mission with the resources collected from the last one. Slightly controversially, the remaster also automatically harvests up remaining resources from the last mission, allowing you to move on rather than having to sit around and wait for your miners to do their thing (which on some missions took an hour or more after the objectives were met) but also meaning that mining becomes a bit pointless as the game continues, since you automatically just hoover up everything and start each successive missions with more money than you can ever spend.

The real meat of the game, though, is space combat. Your fleets consist of several ship types: fighters, bombers, corvettes, frigates and heavy capital ships. As the game continues the enemy improve their ships so you have to as well, gradually building more versatile and fiercer fleets.

The single-player storyline is excellent, unfolding with unmatched atmosphere. The Homeworld games have some of the best music ever created for video games and the game's use of Adagio for Strings is particularly fantastic. The voice acting is also exceptional, with a special word of appreciation for the late Campbell Lane, whose role as both the main narrator and the Bentusi is superb. RIP, sir. Some people will find the game's lack of any recognisable characters - the cut scenes take place either using the in-game engine so only showing the ships, or in 2D black-and-white cut scenes - a bit weird, but it also allows your imagination to run riot.

The game's art design and direction remain unparalleled. Heavily influenced by 1970s SF artist titans Chris Foss and Peter Elson, Homeworld's ship designs are among the best ever conceived for video games, with clunky, retro designs and excellent use of colours. Watching space light up with a furious fusillade of ion beams remains as awe-inspiring now as it was eighteen years ago.

The package contains two games, and it should be noted that Homeworld and Homeworld 2 are somewhat different games in tone: the first game is more rooted in survival and the nitty-gritty of building alliances with the races you encounter, destroying enemy forces in a pragmatic manner and pressing on to the homeworld. The second game is a bit more mystical, diving into the Kushan religion and revealing it has a basis in an actual mysterious alien race who left strange artefacts around the galaxy, artefacts which may hold the key to defeating an invading alien force. The second game is still very good, but the number of missions revolving around finding the Sacred Key of Maguffin to unlock the Portal of Exposition is a bit on the high side and doesn't entirely feel in keeping with the tone of the first game. Weirdly, since Homeworld 2 came out before the rebooted series even started, the games mirror the two halves of the Battlestar Galactica remake (although Homeworld 2's ending is excellent, unlike Battlestar Galactica's).

There aren't too many other downsides: Homeworld is perhaps a little too easy and Homeworld 2 isn't going to put too many veterans of the first game off, although it does have some notable difficulty spikes (the most infamous have been nerfed through patches over the years, thankfully). There were also some teething problems with Homeworld being moved into the HW2 engine, particularly the fact that formations didn't work properly. This was fixed some time ago, fortunately. The biggest problem is one not really in the developers' control: since the original source code was lost years ago, it wasn't possible to remake Homeworld: Cataclysm in the same manner, so it isn't in the package. Fortunately, GoG have been able to resurrect the game and re-release it in a compatible format for modern PCs. Due to World of WarCraft copyright-related reasons, however, they've had to rename it Homeworld: Emergence. This is slightly frustrating as, although it has a far cheesier plot, Cataclysm/Emergence arguably has the best gameplay of the series.

What you get with Homeworld Remastered are two of the very finest space-set real-time strategy games of all time, spruced up to the maximum with their classic gameplay and unmatched atmosphere left completely unchanged. Frequently available very cheaply in Steam sales, I would argue it's a required purchase for any lover of science fiction or strategy gaming.

Homeworld Remastered (*****) is available via Steam now. Gearbox and Blackbird have mooted making Homeworld 3, but this will depend on the sales of Homeworld Remastered and Deserts of Kharak.

HOMEWORLD: DESERTS OF KHARAK gets a big discount and update

Blackbird Interactive's excellent real-time strategy game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak has gotten a substantial update and a steep discount for the Steam Autumn Sale.

Deserts of Kharak is a prequel to the classic Homeworld series of real-time strategy games (Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm - recently renamed Emergence due to copyright issues, and Homeworld 2). Although made by a new company, Blackbird Interactive was founded by ex-developers from Relic Entertainment and includes many veterans who worked on the original games.

The new update fixes some rare but annoying bugs in the original game and adds a "tactical pause" feature, allowing orders to be given to units whilst the game is paused. This feature was present in the original Homeworld and its sequels but was missing from Deserts of Kharak due to time pressures during development.

Deserts of Kharak has also been heavily discounted to £8.99 during the Steam sale. It is an absolute no-brainer for that price. Homeworld Remastered, the spruced-up and re-released version of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 - has also been discounted for the sale and if buy both games together you get a further saving.

Blackbird and publishers Gearbox have also said that the Homeworld franchise will continue - hopefully with a full Homeworld 3 set in space to pick up on the slightly odd ending to Homeworld 2 - if sales of Deserts of Kharak and Homeworld Remastered are strong enough, so if you were thinking of picking up the games but hadn't gotten round to them yet, now is a good time for it.

HOMEWORLD developers tease next project

Blackbird Interactive have released some images to tease their next project.

Their previous game was the splendid Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, a planet-based prequel to the epic Homeworld series of space strategy games. BBI were founded by the ex-Relic team that created the original Homeworld and Homeworld 2. After THQ, who had bought the Homeworld IP rights, went bust, the rights were snapped up by Gearbox, who released both Homeworld Remastered and Deserts of Kharak. Both sold okay, but perhaps not quite as well as hoped, meaning that the chances of a "proper", space-set Homeworld 3 may have been reduced.

The new screenshots show that BBI is happily still in business and working on a new project, but whether this is a sequel or expansion to Deserts of Kharak, a totally new universe or something else remains unclear. Hopefully they'll enlighten us soon.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

The world of Kharak, dominated by the vast Great Banded Desert, is dying. The Kushan people, crowded into the cities of the northern plateaus, are trying survive as well as their technology allows. But hope is kindled when a malfunctioning satellite discovers an unknown object in the deep desert. The initial scans of this "primary anomaly" hint that it may hold the key to the future of the Kushan people...and their distant past.

The Northern Coalition assembles a fleet of vehicles led by the carrier Kapisi and dispatches it into the desert. It must cross thousands of miles of unrelentingly harsh, arid territory to reach the primary anomaly...and along the way they will be hounded by religious fanatics, followers of the god Sajuuk, determined that the invaders will not reach their objective.

Deserts of Kharak - known during its lengthy development period as Shipbreakers - is a real-time strategy game that serves as a prequel to Homeworld (1999) and its sequels. Homeworld was set in space and was the first strategy game to really embrace three-dimensional movement, strategy and thinking. Your fleets could attack - or be attacked - from any angle and were persistent between missions: you units which survived one mission were what you had at the start of the next. This was quite advanced in 1999, when most strategy games were still firmly locked in the much more familiar mould of StarCraft, Command & Conquer and Total Annihilation. Homeworld was the first of a series of RTS games (along with the equally brilliant Ground Control and Hostile Waters) which tried to bring the genre kicking and screaming into the 3D world, with mixed success.

After Homeworld 2's release in 2003, the rights to the series became tangled up in legal issues. The original team at Relic which had made the Homeworld games left to start up a new company, Blackbird Interactive, and started a new project, a multiplayer-focused strategy game. When the Homeworld IP was bought by Gearbox and the original games remastered, Gearbox brought Blackbird on board to help and also allowed them to rework their game into an official Homeworld title, bringing things full circle.

Deserts of Kharak itself is both startlingly similar and strikingly different from the existing Homeworld games. As with the space games, you have a large mobile headquarters from which you build your units, research new technology and command the action. As the campaign proceeds, your command carrier is upgraded with additional shields, armour and weapons and becomes a formidable warship in its own right. You also get increasingly powerful units, starting with small, rapid dune buggies and escalating up to massive landcruisers armed with long-range cannons. Each mission usually requires you to explore areas, harvest resources, hold territory against enemy forces or reach a particular location by striking through enemy lines. You can dip in and out of a long-range sensor view to better control the action from afar, as well as close up through the wonderfully-designed vehicles and environmental effects. There is also the musical score from series veteran Paul Ruskay, which is amazing, and the atmosphere, which genuinely nails that Homeworld "feel" despite the different setting.

The differences are pretty obvious. Being set on a planet, the vertical axis plays less of a role. There are nods to it, with units on elevated terrain getting attack and defensive bonuses and air units providing late-game, decisive strikes and bombing runs. But this is more of a traditional RTS where you build lots of tanks, repair units and artillery and attack the enemy en masse whilst resources are gathered in the background. It's always made for fun, compelling gameplay and this is still the case here. The map environments are beautiful and the designers go to some lengths to break up the maps which could have been very samey, using different times of day and night, terrain features and enemy compositions to make things varied. Each of the 13 maps is well-designed and fun to explore, linked together by mission briefings, wonderfully-animated cut scenes (the 2D artwork which has been a staple of the series now layered over CG and video footage to create something interesting and original whilst still true to the series aesthetics) and crew log entries.

The pace of the game is also relaxed. When combat takes place it's usually fast, furious and harsh, but there are usually longueurs as you build up your forces and can plan your next move with some confidence.

The game does have its weaknesses. First off, you can't pause the game to move the camera around and plan you next move. This is a key ingredient from the original games and it's irritating to find it missing here. There's also the fact that the Unity-based engine is simply not as good as the actual core Homeworld engine itself (which Blackbird only got access to in the last year or so of development, way too late to switch to it), with units clipping through one another and there being significant scaling issues: your vast, imposing war machines are beautifully-designed and rendered, but feel like radio-controlled vehicles. What Blackbird have done with the engine, making it mimic the original Homeworld games, is nothing short of breathtaking, but it can't disguise the fact that it's less impressive technology. There's also no formation controls, you can't control the facing of your units and the strike force tech from Homeworld 2 is also missing, meaning that your units will scamper all off as fast as they can, breaking formation and letting the fast units engage long before the slow ones are even remotely in range. All of these weaknesses are individually bearable, but the combination of them makes for moments of genuine frustration. This frustration is intensified if you have played the original Ground Control, a seventeen-year-old game which has vastly superior UI, formation and facing controls, unit scaling and camera movement compared to Deserts of Kharak, which is all a bit embarrassing. There's also a fairly thin selection of multiplayer content, and the AI is rarely challenging.

These issues prevent Deserts of Kharak (****) (PC) from being the modern RTS classic that it could have been. As a spin-off from the main Homeworld franchise it is fun, entertaining and enjoyable. It certainly whets the appetite and shows that Blackbird more than have the chops for what should come next: a proper Homeworld 3.

HOMEWORLD: DESERTS OF KHARAK trailers

Blackbird Interactive have released several trailers for Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, their real-time strategy game that serves as a prequel to the legendary Homeworld and Homeworld 2. First up is a story trailer:

Blackbird have also released a developer commentary summing up more of the game and its systems:

IGN also have a video showing the opening cinematic and the first two missions of the game.

These videos clarify several points: the game will be set 100 years before the events of the original Homeworld and will be set on the desert planet of Kharak. It will depict the expedition that set out into the Great Banded Desert to detect an anomaly detected from orbit. Those familiar with the existing Homeworld games will know what this anomaly is, but won't be expecting some of the surprises they encounter along the way.

The other thing the videos show is that this game is not skimping on the production quality. The cut scenes are impressive, mixing real video with CGI and hand-drawn illustrations. The 3D environments are sculpted, true 3D terrain rather than being tile-based. The music, again provided by Paul Ruskay, mixes Western strings, Indian instruments and Arabic themes suitable for a desert environment. The game also a distinct mix of SF influences, ranging from Dune to Mad Max to the classic ground-based RTS Ground Control.

Deserts of Kharak comes out next Wednesday, 20 January, for PC.

Story trailer for HOMEWORLD: DESERTS OF KHARAK

Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive have released a story trailer for their upcoming strategy game, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, a prequel to the Homeworld franchise.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak (formerly known as Homeworld: Shipbreakers) will be released via Steam on 20 January. The game, developed by many of the same team as Homeworld and Homeworld 2, will comprise a 13-mission single-player campaign and multiplayer modes.

HOMEWORLD: DESERTS OF KHARAK announced for release on 20 January

Homeworld: Shipbreakers is no more. Instead, Blackbird's Homeworld prequel game is now called Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak. The game will be published by Gearbox on 20 January.

The new game is set one century before the events of Homeworld, at a time when the kiithid (clans) of Kharak are fighting hostile raiders based in the deep southern deserts. When an orbital satellite discovers an anomaly in the southern hemisphere that hints at a powerful, unknown technology, the kiithid must unite to send forces into the southern hemisphere to seize it...only to run into opposition.

Deserts of Kharak is a ground-based realtime strategy game which chronicles the struggles of a kiithid military expedition led by one Rachel S'jet (likely an ancestor of Karan S'jet, who plays a major role in Homeworld and Homeworld 2) to uncover the secrets locked in the deep desert. If you've played the original games, of course, you'll already know what this is, but Blackbird and Gearbox have thrown in some surprises and complications to the story we thought we knew. Whether they can do so organically or if some hefty retconning will be involved remains to be seen.

The game consists of a 13-mission single-player campaign and online multiplayer.

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak is available to pre-order on Steam right now, with Homeworld: Remastered owners eligible for a 20% discount.

Gearbox have previously said that if Homeworld: Remastered and Deserts of Kharak did well, they would strongly consider making a space-set Homeworld 3 in the future.