Despite the fact that by now we have dozens, if not hundreds, of shows, books and more depicting how wars in the future will be fought over with gigantic, bi-pedal robots or mechs, we are still no closer to that day. Which vaguely upset me when I thought about it, until we saw that Steam has Greenlit Dark Horizons: Mechanized Assault Vehicle in its latest round of titles.
A sequel to some pretty old titles, it’s all about hopping into a mech in a persistent online world and helping your side fight to achieve victory. It’s kind of like Planetside, but with giant robots set in the Dark Horizons universe.
While the game is still mostly in alpha (so excuse them the sometimes rudimentary looking graphics in the video above), the finalized version promises to bring an overarching Faction Wars system that will help tie the in-game universe and your actions together. Players band together to fight against enemy factions—all human-controlled—for overall world control, resources and more. Here’s the kicker: You don’t have to tie yourself to any of the factions within the game’s lore such as the Federated States or Eastern Confederation.
You could instead choose to become a mercenary, and faction leaders can then opt to take out contracts that your side will then try to fulfill for cha-ching. So maybe in the first half of the night, your merc captain says they’ll fight on one side till their goal of, say, capturing a hex is done. And then immediately swap sides to fulfill another faction’s contract. Who said being a merc was a bad thing?
Mechs can be fully customized both before and during the game too, promise the devs, with future features including even more world objects like mines and turrets that can be placed for extra effect. There will also be various mission types to keep the pace varied, going anywhere from lightning fast raids to hex-holding sieges.
You can get into the testing process by applying here. Dark Horizons: Mechanized Assault Vehicle is currently on PC, with plans for a Mac and Linux release later in the pipeline.
