From the creators of Sins of a Solar Empire, Ironclad Games, comes a new game called Sins of a Dark Age. It is going to be a real time strategy and tactical command hybrid that is looking to do new things for the genre with it's Hero and Commander focused strategy. It is going to be faster paced than Sins of a Solar Empire and it will be fantasy based. The game will have an online focus that has two teams fight each other, two teams that each have one commander that leads a bunch of heroes, all of which will be controlled by players. The game's are designed to be short and each scenario will have a specific goal for each team. You can also play these scenarios cooperatively against A.I. opponents. You will be able to choose from different heroes, different commanders and different factions, all the while you will be able to rank up, earn rewards and unlock new heroes to play with. To me, this game sounds a lot like League of Legends or Defense of the Ancients so far and what I read about next made me think the game will be even more like those games. Your hero will be fighting on the front lines with A.I. controlled soldiers battling it out and your hero will earn experience, unique abilities and be able to equip powerful items. So while this does sound a like lot the aforementioned games it does hint that it will be something different and something more enjoyable. Read on for more information.


My hopes were mostly dashed that Sins of a Dark Age wasn't going to be like DOTA or LoL when I saw this new interview. There are some interesting ideas, but I still fear that it will be very similar to those games. Especially when it was stated that the game will be Free to Play, like LoL. They did an interview with Gamespot that they put up on their website that goes through many of the concepts of the game. In the interview Blair Fraiser, a developer form Ironclad Games, when asked about how the game is going to be an action RTS Blair responds with, "Action RTS' people know as the ('Defense of the Ancients') DOTA-clone style type stuff, 'League of Legends' and whatnot. We have a completely new approach on how that is going to integrate into a real-time strategy type game." 

That does give me some hope that the game will be different than DOTA or LoL, but I'm not a big fan of that genre and I really enjoyed Sins of a Solar Empire. To see them stray so far away from Sins of a Solar Empire in such a big way is a bit depressing. I did find some exciting possibilities in the interview though, like this when Blair responded to a question about base building and resource management, "Again, we're looking at the philosophy we took in 'Sins (of a Solar Empire)' where we took the high level strategy component of the game and a low level tactical component of the game, we are keeping that philosophy. But in this new game the Commander is taking care of the high level strategy; that includes base-building, resource acquisition, controlling large groups of units, AKA 'the chaff'. Other players will control the powerful Heroes that will lead those armies into battles and in the assaults into the enemy defences. " 


Watch the interview for yourself below or head on over to the post about it and read the transcript. I do hope that even though the game is similar to LoL and DOTA that it will be still be unique and interesting for those of us who do not enjoy those games, but time will tell as the game develops and we start to see some gameplay. Also, I don't mean to trash LoL or DOTA, with my negative tone throughout this article, my negative tone should be associated to the change of genre from Sins of a Solar Empire to Sins of a Dark Age, not because it is a LoL or DOTA type of game. Just because I don't generally enjoy that genre doesn't mean that it doesn't have merit for others.