Retro RTS Tempest Rising is much more than a new Command and Conquer

This whole retro revival thing – this trend right now for boomer shooters, low-poly horrors, and spiritual successors to erstwhile classics – it’s nice, and it’s cute, and it makes you feel warm inside, but it’s going to get old pretty quick. If you’re a game developer, the current, greater-than-ever appetite for nostalgia might scream opportunity. You’ve got players who are middle aged, maybe have a bit of money, but the games they love and remember aren’t being made any more. All you’ve got to do is rebuild and reheat what sold well in the past – it’s a lay up. Except it’s not going to last very long. Ignoring the fact that about 1,000 other developers have got the same plan, if you make, say, an FPS that strongly evokes the collective memories of Half-Life, people who see it are probably just going to go and play Half-Life. You need to offer something more. Nostalgia is a strong hook, but your game has to stand on its own.

And that brings us to Tempest Rising, an upcoming RTS game which on its surface – and maybe a few layers below its surface – resembles the classic Command and Conquer games of the ‘90s and early ‘00s. It’s set during World War 3, with a quasi sci-fi aesthetic. One of the factions, a kind of unified, allied world government, is called the GDF. Another, the eponymous Tempest, dresses in black and their barracks building is decorated with two big stone hands.

There’s a glowing plant that seems to be spreading across the globe. Frank Klepacki is doing part of the soundtrack. More broadly, Tempest Rising is inspired by the entire golden age of the RTS, games like StarCraft, Total Annihilation, and Dark Reign. But developer Slipgate Ironworks has a lot more to offer than just a nostalgia trip. Speaking exclusively to PCGamesN, lead designer Brandon Casteel explains how Command and Conquer and the classics of the ‘90s serve as a springboard for something distinctive in its own right.

“There are games that are purely nostalgic,” Casteel says. “They just want to give you the same experience that another game gave you. I think that’s a trap. We’ve seen, especially in the RTS space, there is a lot of desire for experiences that make people feel like they felt, but if you’re giving someone an experience they’ve already gotten, they’re just going to want to go and experience that thing again in its purest form. I always try to be careful with Command and Conquer questions. While the comparisons are inevitable, from my perspective, setting ourselves apart from it is very important to me.

“We actually got started before the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection was announced. It was interesting to see the hunger for that style of gameplay, but it didn’t inform our decision to create the game in the first place. It’s been very important to me to create an experience that stands on its own.”

So what makes Tempest Rising different? First of all, its inspirations extend beyond Command and Conquer. This isn’t a variation on one specific series. Slipgate’s ambition is to capture the best elements of all the greatest RTS games of the ‘90s, combine them, rework them, and add its own individual ideas. “We wanted to look at what the genre has always done really well, and see the opportunities to do things that haven’t been done in the genre for a long time,” Casteel says.

Specifically, Casteel and the team have focused on units and base building, the core pillars of real-time strategy. Modern RTS games, Casteel says, are too concerned with thinning the unit roster down as far as possible and ensuring that every single soldier or vehicle has a singular, express purpose. Tempest Rising wants to allow for more experimentation.

If players are typically encouraged to take a utilitarian approach – this unit is for speed, this one’s for power, this one’s for destroying buildings – in Tempest Rising, you’re prompted to combine your troop types and think more freely. The GDF, for example, possesses units that can mark enemies for other soldiers, boosting their damage output. Similarly, certain vehicles will provide stat buffs for everyone around them. In classic Command and Conquer, the system is very rock, paper, scissors – tanks can kill turrets, but turrets can kill infantry, and infantry can kill tanks. Tempest Rising is less rigid.

“In a lot of modern RTS games we see unit rosters that feel like the developer saying ‘what is the minimum number of things I can get away with and how can I make each thing in the unit roster fulfill its own very unique niche?’” Casteel explains. “One thing we’re fortunate to be able to do is provide a sumptuous array of options. It’s not many RTS games that come out today with 25 or 26 unique unit types.”

Slipgate is also challenging the traditions and tropes around hero units. We all remember Tanya, Boris, or the unnamed commando from Tiberian Dawn. While they can make a huge impact, they also consume the entire mission – their unique abilities are so powerful that you feel you have to commit your whole force to protect them, and so the game stops feeling like a true RTS. Casteel has a better idea.

“The idea of hero units is also very prickly. Some people absolutely hate them and some people think they’re fun. We have a unit type we call specialists and what I’m trying to do is navigate this narrow pathway, trying to find a happy middle ground for these high-impact units that don’t anchor the whole experience around themselves. Often, the whole army has to exist to support the hero. I’m trying to go the other way and the specialist units support the rest of the army. They’re here in service to what people come to RTS games for, which is to fight using an army. You don’t want an RPG that just so happens to have an army in the background.”

As for base building, Casteel says that while Tempest Rising isn’t “doing anything that’s never been seen before,” there are some tweaks, twists, and enhancements that make the game’s construction stand above its ‘90s inspirations. In Command and Conquer particularly, the strength and success of your base was measured in sheer volume. With more money you could build more stuff, which made your base ‘more better.’

Tempest Rising introduces some decision making. Instead of just keeping your buildings online, your power output can be boosted – kind of overclocked – to dramatically increase production but at the cost of a your buildings’ HP – you can turbo charge your vehicle factory and make tougher tanks more quickly, but you’ll have to spend time and cash repairing the building later. You can also commit resources to developing ‘plans,’ similar to status effects that add buffs and upgrades to your units.

“What I’m trying to do is incorporate elements in smart and fun ways,” Casteel says. “I want people to make intelligent choices about how they’re spending their power. It was very important to me to make units, factions, and a gameplay expression that felt unique to Tempest Rising.”

With a new Tempest Rising demo now available to try, Slipgate’s ambitious strategy love letter is getting closer to reality. It’s a difficult game to balance. The references and homages to the ‘90s classics need to shine through, but Tempest Rising also needs the ideas and new mechanics sufficient to give it its own identity. Similarly, the systems in an RTS need to be deep and robust, but not so much that they consume the entire experience.

“It’s perfectly possible to build something but then optimize all the fun out of it,” Casteel concludes. “People are going to find the easiest, simplest way to do anything – people are going to try to come in and rush the experience in order to get the payoff. You have to try and see the best ways to ruin it so you can make sure they don’t work. There’s a long list of what people expect from the genre.”

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