The debut trailer for Hardware: Shipbreakers , the sci-fi strategy game made by some of the people behind the Homeworld series, shows what can be achieved with just concept art, music and magnificently gruff narration. There's nary a hint of 'gameplay' in this video - which tells the story of a shipbreaker's desire to return home from a mysterious 'graveyard planet' - but it's comfortably the best trailer I've seen all year, evoking the similarly beautiful cutscenes from the Homeworld games. Have a gander below.
We don't know much about Hardware: Shipbreakers, other than that it's a "persistent multiplayer" "social strategy game" from Blackbird Interactive, a company made up of former Relic staff, including Homeworld's art director Rob Cunningham and lead artist Aaron Kambeitz. The description on the Facebook beta signup page reveals a little more: "HARDWARE (HW) is a next-generation online social game based on the concept of salvaging resources on a distant, barren planet named LM-27." Next-generation eh? So presumably it's going to be on PS4 or the mythical next Xbox as well.
Hardware: Shipbreakers is due out sometime this year, and after watching the following video, you'll wish that "sometime" meant "sometime next week". (Thanks to Kotaku .)
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.