Legion Arena Announced!

Legion Arena Announced!

Slitherine online title allows players to
battle enemies of Rome

Slitherine Software are pleased to announce
Legion Arena, their upcoming online strategy game. Legion Arena puts you the
player in charge of a Roman army and takes you up against the enemies of Rome.
You must recruit & train up your troops, choosing the skills they will develop
in an effort to create the most powerful army. Games will be played entirely
online & all results are passed back to the server and logged and the player’s
army ranked. And the best part is… it’s free!

Legion Arena uses a totally new engine, but
we won’t bore you with the details. It’s enough to say that it allows fully 3D
battles with thousands of guys. 3D engines are a dime a dozen, so we want to
focus on the gameplay and not try and wow you with how many poly’s we can push
around the screen.

The player’s army starts small…really
small! In fact to start with it only includes the player’s general character.
The player also starts with a small treasury and can choose which units to
recruit into their fledgling army. Initially you wont be able to afford too many
troops & the higher quality units like Legionaries & Praetorians will be well
out of reach. As the player fights and wins battles, their men gain experience &
honours. These can be used to buy skills for the squad, ranging from improved
weapons handling to the ability to hold a new formation.

Players will be able to personalise their
armies by changing the names of each unit, tweaking the colours and even
changing the textures. Over time you’ll become really attached to your men and
they to you, as long as you treat them well! If your men suffer high casualties
their loyalty may suffer and they may ask for more money before they will fight
for you.

Each battle will have specific criteria &
conditions. For example, some scenarios will limit you to only 8 units, while
others will let you bring your whole army along. To win one scenario you’ll have
to defeat the enemy, but for another the objective may be to survive until
reinforcements arrive. Which units you bring to the battle are you to you, but
each will have their strengths and weaknesses so it’s important to have a
balanced army where you can select the right tool for the job.

Before a battle the player deploys their
troops, but after much feedback we’ve decided this is not where the control
should end. Players will be able to direct their troops once the battle has
begun. The number of orders the player can issue is limited by the experience of
the general in charge. The idea is to allow the player enough control so that
they can swing the course of a battle, but without turning it into a frantic
click fest. We think the order system we’re developing does this perfectly. Just
to clarify – you can select a unit during a battle and tell it where to march,
as well as who to attack, but how often you can do this depends on the quality
of your general.

After each battle the results will be
uploaded to a dedicated server and any cash awards added to you treasury. You
will then be able to reviewing you ranking in a number of areas. Armies are
ranked in all sorts of ways such as casualties inflicted, battles won & fastest
victory, so you have a good chance of being the best at something – even if it’s
only the fastest defeat. On top of this you can view the ranking of each unit
individually versus all other units, or only against units of the same type.
There are more than enough stats to keep the hardcore players happy.

Legion Arena will be downloadable for free!
That’s right, you can play for free! Players can sign up and get their free user
account and play the game as soon as we launch. Each day the player will be able
to fight a number of battles (number to be decided during beta test) and the
idea is that you will only spend around 15-30 minutes a day playing the game.
Legion Arena is designed to fit into the busy schedule that many of us have
today & does not require the time commitment that many other games do.

After a number of weeks, players will be
asked if they wish to continue to control their army. If they do, they will then
have to start to pay a small subscription charge. If they choose not to, their
army will be put on hold until they decide to sign up. One of the reasons for
signing up is that each month new material will be released. There will be new
units, new maps, updated gameplay features and more. We’ll even be introducing
new sides & the player will be able to start a new army with these new sides.
The first side that will be added is Celtic, giving the player the chance to
control the fearsome Celtic Warband and their powerful cavalry.

Legion Arena is due to be completed in a
couple of months. This week the live server was delivered and a fat pipe was
installed into Slitherine’s Canadian office. Although there is still a lot of
tweaking to be done, one of the major remaining tasks is to get the remaining
animations motion captured. The team will be at the motion capture studio next
week to finish this off. Once that’s in, the game will be entering a closed beta
& soon afterwards we’ll be ready to go live.