Strategy veterans Petroglyph announce Forged Battalion, a customisable RTS

RTS specialist Petroglyph has announced Forged Battalion, a new strategy game with a strong focus on unit customisation and building your own faction. As you can see in the deeply '90s-feeling trailer above, which evokes C&C in the choice of music and even the introduction of the logo, you can alter every unit's chassis with different weapons, locomotor types and regenerative armour. 

You're part of a resistance group, taking the world back from a military force called The Collective at the end of the 21st century. The studio promises a 'persistent tech tree', meaning that each battle will contribute to your overall progress, helping to unlock new blueprints. There'll also be co-op and competitive multiplayer for up to eight players, what's being called a 'dynamic story campaign' and Steam Workshop support. They also tease superweapons, which were always a daft specialty of Westwood's C&C games. 

Forged Battalion will launch in 2018 on Steam Early Access, and should arrive with at least five campaign missions, different multiplayer modes and five multiplayer maps. They're expecting to stay in Early Access for six months. 

Petroglyph was founded by former Westwood staff, and this isn't its only recent stab at a classic-looking RTS—2016's 8-Bit Armies offered retro-styled warfare, plus Ian said 2015's Grey Goo "excels" as "a revival of a once popular genre" in our review. Meanwhile, its classic Star Wars RTS Empire At War had its multiplayer servers switched back on last month. Check out some Forged Battalion screens below:

Update: We've also had a first look at Forged Battalion. Check it out here

Samuel Roberts
Former PC Gamer EIC Samuel has been writing about games since he was 18. He's a generalist, because life is surely about playing as many games as possible before you're put in the cold ground.
Latest in Strategy
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Battle Brothers
Nearly 2 years after its last update, the excellent Battle Brothers gets 'a bucket load of fixes' and free new content
King wielding his axe against would-be assassins in Norland.
Medieval colony sim Norland is getting a 'damn big update' that completely overhauls the game's mechanics: 'We're rolling out some radical changes to the core gameplay'
Age of Empires 2
Former Age of Empires 2 dev claims Microsoft demanded its first expansion should have a Korean faction, because 'StarCraft sold 3 million copies in Korea'
Endless Legend 2 Kin faction reveal
It's turtle time: Endless Legend 2's first faction is the fortification-loving Kin of Sheredyn
Latest in News
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened