Earthbreakers is an RTS-inspired FPS by ex-Westwood developers

Remember Command & Conquer: Renegade? It took the classic RTS series and transformed it into a shooter, letting you play as one of those all-action commando units—you know, the "I've got a present for ya!" guys. Now Petroglyph, a studio made up of ex-Westwood devs responsible for games like 8-Bit Invaders, Forged Battalion, and Grey Goo, are working on a game called Earthbreakers that could easily be a spiritual sequel to it.

Earthbreakers is a multiplayer game where teams of infantry fight over a resource called Vilothyte crystals, which they use to construct and upgrade bases, vehicles, upgrades, and new infantry classes. It's basically an RTS as seen from the ground level of individual units who are out there protecting harvesters while they munch up fields of glowing resource rock. 

It's got six driveable vehicles, 12 infantry classes, and 11 structures to build. Up to 32 players can be on each team, depending on map size, and it'll support bots as well as player-run servers. Earthbreakers is due out next year on Steam.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.