With a twist of RTS
You can play Supernova today. The MOBA from developer Primal Game Studios is publisher Bandai Namco’s next push into the realm of free-to-play (you’ll remember the Gundam Vs-like 2-on-2 arena fighter Rise of Incarnates). Namco also sees entering the new hotly competitive genre as carrying on the competitive tradition of its fighting game heritage.
Rather than spin-off an existing franchise into a MOBA — there are quite a few of those — the company let Budapest-based Primal create an original IP. In this case, a future setting where various commanders of human and alien are fighting for supremacy in the galaxy. What it boils down to, though, is a bunch Transformers-looking robots — and a few sexy-lady-looking robots, for some reason — pew-pewing the heck out of each other in space.
Supernova hasn’t had extensive play testing outside of the studio, so while my couple of matches ran smoothly, there is bound to be balancing to do and issues that hundreds of prospective players will find for the development team to iron out. That’s what today’s alpha sign ups are for, with formal launch slated for later this year.
In my hands-on opportunity, I went with an Assassin class that looked like a lightsaber-wielding, leggy and busty version of the robots from the Will Smith opus I, Robot. There are a bunch of Commanders to suit your play style and more waiting in the wings being balanced. Your play style will be based on MOBA tenets, too, which I’m just no darn good at. So I did a mix of killing AI monsters and trying to sneak in a few Commander kills in.
One big difference between Supernova and other MOBAs is that rather than collect gold from scoring kills or assists, you’re scoring attribute points used to increase basic stats, as well as personally building your army of “minions” — you’re choosing which little AI buddies to build and take with. You can also craft material scored from matches to upgrade your Commander with accessories.
There’s plenty to do for Supernova to win an audience in an increasingly saturated genre. The RTS tinges are light, but could differentiate it a bit. Space robot fans might gravitate to it naturally. We’ll see how it does building up a community in the months leading to launch.
