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Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first expansion to
their hit RTS/4X hybrid, AI War! You can
download a trial version or purchase a license key
on the details page for the expansion. Thanks to all of our fans who have helped to make this game possible
with their feedback, suggestions, and preorders over the last months!
The Zenith Remnant includes a massive amount of new content that brings the galaxy to life in exciting ways.
Capturables, special AI ships, and ancient alien artifacts litter the cosmos, making your choices as a
player more varied than ever. Do you risk total war with the AI by capturing and rebuilding a massive golem?
Do you procure defensive superweapons from Zenith traders?
Maybe you’d like to finally be able to build the powerful Core ships that the AI has long used -- or the
all-new experimental ships with strange and powerful abilities. Befriend the dangerous alien Dyson Sphere
by helping it against the AI forces, or sneak around it to avoid incurring its wrath (that thing is moody).
If you see a Devourer Golem, don’t forget to run -- preferably as it pummels your enemies. Any path you
take, there are consequences; AI War is known for being heavily strategic even amongst strategy games, and
The Zenith Remnant takes it to new heights.
Key Features * 122 new ships, including:
* 14 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.
* 7 massive capturable "Golem" ships.
* Dozens of other new capturables, including “experimental” ships.
* 12 new AI Types.
* 4 Zenith alien minor factions (NPCs).
* Over 40 minutes of new in-game music tracks.
* Several new map styles.
* Several new AI behaviors and many related special AI weapons.
Availability And Pricing
The Zenith Remnant has a retail price of $9.99 USD (or equivalent currency), and is digitally available in
English in all territories. The expansion will, starting today, be available through all of our online
partners including Impulse, Steam, Direct2Drive, and GamersGate.
50% Off Sale On AI War
In celebration of the release of the expansion, we and most all of our partners are selling the base game of
AI War: Fleet Command at a 50% discount until the 18th or 19th (the end date varies depending on the vendor). If you already have the game, now's the perfect time to get a friend into it so that you can enjoy some co-op together!
Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet Command version 3.000.
You can download a trial version of the game, as
well as purchase a license key to unlock the full
version. If you already have the game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the
game to get the latest patch.
- Updated art for many ships, including larger and more impressive command stations,
space docks, fortresses, colony ships, and more!
-New starships: The Raid Starship line has been split, so that now there is a Raid Starship
line (Mark I-III), and a separate Leech Starship line (Mark I-III).
-New capturables: Fabricators, which let you manufacture (the previously AI-only) Mark V
ships, Bomber Starships, and more!
-Co-op improvements: Players who have lost their home station, or who join the game late,
now get a “Home Command Station Core,” which provides them with the resources and build capacity they
need to keep playing in a fun way without slowing the other players down. Other minor changes also
abound, such as messages to allied players when technologies are unlocked, and improvements to engineer
assistance from allies.
-AI Improvements: The AI is smarter and more devious than ever, while some of the more
game-flow-interrupting tactics such as Cross-Planet Attacks have also been made less frequent. Ship
autotargeting is now notably better for both the players and AI.
-Performance Improvements: The game now performs 400% to 1000% better in supermassive games of
(those with 100,000 to 200,000 units on the map), and on average 20% to 80% better on regular sized
games (usually 80,000 units or fewer).
-Interface Improvements: A wide variety of player-suggested minor tweaks have been made to
the interface, leading to ever-improved usability. The planetary summary now has category-colorization
on mouseover, planet names are colorized by owner status in the galaxy map, “control nodes” have been
added to allow new automation options for players, amongst many others.
-Other New Ships: Rally Posts allow for directing incoming allied forces to a specific place
on a planet, Cleanup Drones remove exploded enemy mines and turrets, and Mine Layers have turned into
more generalized Remains Rebuilders which can auto-rebuild turrets as well as mines for players (both
AI and human, so be sure to use Cleanup Drones on enemy planets).
-New Minor Factions: Minor Factions aren’t just for customers of the expansion! Three new
minor factions have also been added to version 3.0 for all AI War players (optionally enable any
combination of them through the lobby).
-Human Marauders are a hostile minor faction that will sometimes attack you or the AI from
deep space, using their powerful new Buzz Bombs and Dagger Frigates.
-Human Resistance Fighters are an allied minor faction that will sometimes decloak from deep
space and join you in assaulting AI worlds with their powerful new Fighter/Bombers and Frigates.
-Rebelling Human Colonies are formerly-captive human cities that need your help in order to
survive -- fail and you’ll see an increase in AI Progress, but succeed and your entire team will be able
to build the powerful new ships used by the Resistance Fighters.
-Ship Balance Updates: Many minor and major ship balance adjustments have been made – the most notable
of these is that the core fighter/cruiser/bomber triangle has been redefined into an easier-to-follow
fighter/bomber/frigate triangle.
-Game Flow Improvements: Not only are the disruptive cross-planet attacks less frequent, but all
human ships now move 40% faster (making it easier to stage defenses or coordinate assaults – especially so
since AI ships are still the same speed as before), many new automations have been built into the interface
(the most notable of which is that metal/crystal harvesters are now automatically rebuilt on human planets
after hostile AI forces are gone), and a few key structures (space docks, factories, etc) have been made more
robust. Players will spend less time than ever on repetitive tasks, letting especially new players take to
the stars faster.
-And Much More: The full release notes for version 3.0 (not including expansion notes) are over
10,000 words long. This is by the largest single release AI War has ever seen, and no small wonder – it was
three months in the making! Future free DLC updates will resume their monthly schedule.
Work is still in progress on The Zenith Remnant, AI War's first expansion (due out in the second week of January),
but Arcen is finally ready to show some previews of their upcoming projects for 2010.
The first preview is a bit brief, but gives you a sneak peek mainly at the art of the very next Arcen title,
a currently-untitled puzzle game (formerly called
"Feedback"). The basic premise on this one is that it's a new, as yet undisclosed, block-based mechanic that is
fun and easy to pick up; miles away from the glut of match-3 clones. Arcen will have a lot more information on this
one starting in January and February, and most likely a playable beta in February or March (demo for free, or full
thing for people who preorder, same as with The Zenith Remnant).
The second preview is for Arcen's next next game, a tower defense game called
A Valley Without Wind. Even if you turn your nose up at
the casualness that is generally the tower defense genre, if you're a fan of Arcen titles this is a preview to check
out. True to Arcen's growing reputation, this will be a title that doesn't sit neatly in a single genre, and which
pushes the boundaries of what that genre is supposed to be (see preview for details). Most likely development for
this title will not begin until somewhere between April and June (right after the puzzle game is released), with a
release likely in Q4 of 2010.
As is always the case for Arcen, these titles will include co-op as a primary feature right alongside their
single-player experience. The puzzle game will also have competitive multiplayer, a first for Arcen.
Compared to AI War, both of these games have a more vastly casual veneer to them in terms of art and how
accessible they are on the surface, but they'll also both have the same level of hardcore depth that fans
of AI War have come to expect. More information to come on these exciting new games starting in January!
And, don't forget -- the second expansion for AI War is still planned for late 2010, and free DLC for AI War
is going to continue all throughout the year!
Holiday Roundup
December 23rd, 2009
It's been an incredibly busy time here at Arcen in the last two months, what with Pablo and Chris coming on
fulltime and all the paperwork and business stuff that entails, the ongoing development of The Zenith Remnant,
our further pre-development of art and design for our next two titles (the first two previews for both of those
will be out today), and our ongoing work with publicity, new upcoming digital partners, and our upcoming retail
deals. Actually, this has been about as busy as time as we've ever had. So, more than a few things have fallen
through the cracks on the announcements front, so our apologies for that. Here's a catchup post with a variety of
stuff:
Recent Press
- Rock, Paper,
Shotgun recently featured AI War as their December 18th entry for their "Games of 2009" list.
- Sugar Free Gamer recently selected AI War as the "top indie game
that you should play this year."
- DIY Gamer gave an honorable mention to AI War
was one of the best indie games of 2009.
- Sandy
Warnstaff over at Reclaim Your Game recently did a review of AI War: "One of the most methodical,
challenging and unrestricted games I have ever played, AI War is the embodiment of nearly everything that can go
right in an RTS game with few drawbacks... I've seen some good developer support, but Arcen Games really takes the
cake... I hold Arcen Games up as the standard that all developers and publishers should be held to."
Expansion Update
Work on the expansion has been proceeding as we had hoped, and the current prerelease of the game (2.001ZE today)
has 117 new ships for the expansion. That's considerably more than we'd been expecting to add (having previously
promised "between 80-100" new ships), and there are still about 6 or so more ships that are going to make it into
the expansion before our release in the second week of January (which we are presently on schedule for). We also
have over 44 minutes of new music so far completed, with more on the way -- it's some really great stuff, and we're
holding it until our official release day as something of a surprise. If you liked the soundtrack to the base game,
you'll love this one even more.
So, what's not in the expansion yet? Well, the big thing is that there is still a lot of QA work to do, and
many of the ships still need balance tweaks or various little fixes to them. There are also still more map styles
to be added beyond the two new ones that are already in place, and the new neutral AI is something we're still
working with along with the last player-controllable golem. The new expansion-specific achievements also aren't
yet in place. And that's about it! This product has come an amazing way since October when we started on it, and
honestly I think we're all a bit surprised at just how much we have been able to accomplish in such a short period
of time. It's shaping up to be a really notable expansion, to be sure.
December/November Free DLC
One other thing that we've learned in the last couple of months is that it's pretty much impossible to release free
DLC while we're actively developing an expansion to a game -- at least when the turnaround on the deadline is so
short. Make no mistake, we've been absolutely packing the DLC into the beta patches all through November and
December, and those are free to anyone who has the base game. However, we didn't do an official release of any of
that DLC in November, and now it's become clear that we can't do one in December, either.
There is simply too much risk of introducing bugs into the official release from the beta work when things are
changing constantly; generally we prefer to have a week where no major features are added before we do a release,
so that that week can be spent on final QA and bugtesting. With the expansion in full swing, we just have not had
an opportunity for that sort of downtime. Hopefully that makes sense -- we've promised monthly free DLC, but our
first priority is to make sure that we always give you a quality product, not one riddled with bugs (not that the
beta versions are riddled with bugs, but there are a lot of outstanding issues that we'd strongly prefer to resolve
before making an official release).
But! Don't worry that you're losing out on anything DLC-wise, in the grand scheme of things. Our next DLC release
will be by January 8th at the latest, and it will have 3x as much content as a normal one -- basically, all that
queued-up content from the betas in November, December, and early January. There's a lot of cool stuff in that one,
so it should be very exciting even for those who aren't ready to move up to the expansion just yet. And, if you
want it sooner than later, you can always download the beta DLC at any time you please.
Lastly... Happy Holidays!
It's a great time of year to be a gamer, with games of all sorts having come out in the last month or two, and with
lots of discounts all over the place. Look for discounts with all of our distribution partners in the coming weeks.
Here at Arcen, we're largely going to be out of the office from December 24th through January 3rd, though Chris we'll
be around for critical support issues, and probably some smaller balance/bugfix work on the expansion, along with some
last work on the neutral AIs, etc, so that we're sure to be on schedule for our release in January. But, we're going
to be around a lot less in general during that timeframe, anyway, so that we can spend time with our families and
enjoy the holidays. We hope that you have a chance to do the same! It's been a really great year for us, with the
company being founded and then amazingly growing large enough to actually support us fulltime, and we owe great thanks
to all our fans for making that possible. In more senses than one, we couldn't have done it without you!
Gaming Nexus: Chris Park Interviewed About Design And Development of AI War
December 10th, 2009
Gaming Nexus recently conducted an interview with Chris Park
about AI War, the Arcen Games design philosophy, and a lot of interesting questions about the
development/distribution/support of the game itself.
Gaming Dead: Chris Park Talks AI War, Indie Strategy and Post-Launch Support
December 9th, 2009
Gaming Dead: "In a recent interview with Gaming Dead, Arcen Games'
Chris Park, developer of the eight player co-op massive RTS title AI War: Fleet Command elaborated on how
he's implementing a post-launch support model in the form of free monthly DLC updates in the interest of
seeing the game become the largest strategy title out there."
My views of indie games have forever been altered. When was the last time you played an indie game that
contained the amount of content of several retail games? If you have ever played and enjoyed Sins of a
Solar Empire but cried because you couldn’t play it on a laptop or that the scale just wasn’t grand enough
for you, then you should pick up AI War – Fleet Command right now. - Derek Duncan, DarkZero
Thanksgiving Special! 25% Off Arcen Titles
November 25th, 2009
In celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, we're having our first multi-product discount
sale on our site! Enter code BLLR0018P to get a 25% discount on all games
bought directly from Arcen through 11/30/2009. This means that you can pick up
AI War: Fleet Command for $14.99 USD, and/or preorder
AI War: The Zenith Remnant for $7.49 USD!
If you live outside the US, never fear, the discount is equivalent in every currency. Note: If you want
to buy both together, simply click the
purchase link
on the first page, then go to the
second page
and click the purchase link, and both will be in your shopping cart together.
The Zenith Remnant is the first expansion
pack to Arcen's hit space-based "grand strategic 4X tower defense RTS" game, and is currently in beta. The
full version of the expansion is expected to be released in the second week of January, but players who who
preorder and want early access are free to download the beta from our forums at any time. Players who want
to first try a demo of the expansion beta can also download that from the forums. The Zenith Remnant will
include around 115 new ships, at least four new map styles, a new neutral AI faction (the Zenith aliens),
and lots and lots of gameplay-expanding new mechanics and content.
You can also preorder the expansion at Stardock's Impulse,
although people who preorder via Impulse will not have access to the beta until next week -- our fault on
that, not Stardock's. Mea culpa! Preorders are also planned with many of our other distribution partners,
but those will mostly not kick off until closer to official release on those platforms (so, early January,
most likely). We are aiming to have a simultaneous official release of the expansion on all outlets that
currently carry AI War.
In the coming month, also keep your eyes out for more information, including screenshots and/or concept art,
about Arcen's next two titles. The first is an untitled casual puzzle game with a fresh and fun new
mechanic, and the second is a tower defense game called A Valley Without Wind (yes, the
tower defense genre is super crowded, but we have our own take on the whole affair that we think you'll
find quite different from the glut of others out there -- more info on that within the next month, but it's
very exciting!). For those who have been eagerly awaiting our puzzle/adventure/zombie survival game Alden
Ridge, please note that that title is now slated for 2011. It's still coming, and we're still excited
about it, but that one needs more time in the cooker to really do it justice.
Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks!
The Claw - Google Wave with Chris Park
November 12th, 2009
The Claw
has recently conducted a massive Google Wave interview
with Chris Park about AI War, other upcoming Arcen titles, Chris's design philosphy and
inspirations, and the future for Arcen Games in general.
For me, it’s a rare thing indeed for a game to move from total obscurity to a fixed place on my hard drive in
the course of a handful of days... [AI War] is just brimming with innovative twists on the 4X-style RTS. - Tyler Sager, Gaming Nexus
Big Download Review of AI War
November 3rd, 2009
AI War is, quite simply, the best experience you could have with co-op or single-player
real-time strategy in this or any year. It combines grand strategy with emergent AI to
form an excellent game perfect for parties and multiplayer. It is easily worth double the
price that the developer is selling it at, and anyone with any affinity or taste for
strategy games should not miss it. It may be daunting at first, but an excellent tutorial
and amazing gameplay mechanics alleviate this into a game that almost anyone can - and
should - play. - James Murff, Big Download
Three Moves Ahead Episode 37 -- Chris Park and AI War: Fleet Command
November 3rd, 2009
Three Moves Ahead
is the official podcast of Flash of Steel , and
commonly features really high quality discussion of strategy games for hardcore gamers,
and interviews with industry giants -- Brad Wardell, Soren Johnson, and others. Episode
37 features Troy Goodfellow and Tom Chick talking with Chris Park, the lead designer of
AI War about the state of the game, how some of its more unique aspects came about, and
what is planned for the future. There's also a fairly good bit of discussion of launching
a new indie game and how that went for AI War, in addition to the more design-related discussions.
