The game uses the Unity Engine and has been in extensive pre-alpha testing, using gamer suggestions to help the game’s designers, to the point that developer Lantern co-founder Austin Hice states the game is community-developed.
“We understand why the big studios choose to keep the audience out of the process. It’s a real risk to invite people in this early. What if there’s bad press for your unfinished game?” Hice related, “But over the last six months we’ve seen that nothing can top the ideas that players bring to the game.”
The game’s backstory is bizarre, to say the least. An international mega-corporation ominously named Toxi Co. has invaded the Arctic to find the purest ice on Earth. That’s when a freak drilling accident spills a mysterious goo that mutates all of the indigenous species. Thus, you have a war between Toxi Co. and Eskimos, which is being masterminded an arms-dealing polar bear named Fatty Sparkles.
The turn-based strategy game is not UGO-IGO (you go, I go), but rather a WEGO (we go) game, in which each player plots their strategy at the same time, and the results are played out at the same time. This allows for asynchronous gameplay.
A closed alpha of the game will be beginning in September. Players who want to try the game out can check out the official site here.
