Yes, “Grey Goo” sounds like a funny name for a real-time strategy game. It conjures up images of harmless blobs, or World of Goo’s adorable sticky building blocks. [Ed. note – Or booze, if you add an “se”.] But when you actually read up on the concept, which involves swarms of self-replicating nano-robots that break down anything and everything (including people) for materials with which to build more self-replicating nano-robots, it becomes downright terrifying. Like the atomic bomb and biological warfare, it’s a means by which humanity might eventually destroy itself through unchecked scientific advancement. The name’s not so cute anymore, is it?

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Beta walkers, AKA "Goo food."

“ The goo grows to around the size of a base building - because that's what it is.

Grey Goo Screenshots & Concept Art 20 IMAGES

“ Yes, they can build walls, just like the Age of Empires II glory days.

The human base doesn't look all that human, but it does look cool.

The idea of the Grey Goo theory is also very appropriate theme for a traditional RTS. Dating back to Westwood Studios’ Dune II in 1992, this genre has almost always started with one unit or building that strips resources from the environment and produces more things like itself. That’s what Petroglyph Studios (founded by ex-Westwood developers) is going back to in Grey Goo for late 2014, and embracing this theme has given rise to an interesting new faction idea that’s wildly different from most of what we’ve seen before.The concept of a mobile base isn’t new, but I’ve rarely seen one quite this mobile. A silvery amorphous blob oozes around a bright and colorful jungle map, crawling up and over obstacles like mountains and forests that vehicles can’t traverse, quickly enveloping and destroying any units too slow to avoid it. (It doesn’t leave a blackened trail of stripped earth behind it, but that’s a conscious design choice – the trail would’ve led enemies straight to it.) It moves to a resource patch and sucks up nutrients, but quickly moves on, as it’s vulnerable when it’s sitting still.The Beta are the closest thing to a conventional faction that Grey Goo has, but even they are far from the usual copy of Command & Conquer’s GDI or StarCraft’s Terrans. They build their bases around power-core structures that have to be built first. The bigger the power core, the more factories and resource harvesters can be built around it (up to six), but the greater the risk that someone will come along and shut it all down at once with one tactical strike at the center.The third faction is human, but again, they’re not the typical human army. This one, Petroglyph says, is designed as a turtling faction. They sit inside their shiny white buildings, which must all be networked together, and build powerful defensive turrets that teleport around the base as needed. What I saw of their offensive units were all robotic, which actually made them feel unrelatable, as human factions tend to be in this type of game. But I’m very interested to see how this base-building system works in depth, since it means that none of the three factions in Grey Goo will have a conventional build-anywhere base system.That’s what’s most exciting about Grey Goo for me – it’s a traditional game that’s cast caution into the wind when it comes to its asymmetrical faction design, and having three totally different armies to learn (instead of one conventional army and two creative ones) makes it seem like a promising game for producing outside-the-box tactics.

Dan Stapleton is IGN's Reviews Editor. You can follow him on Twitter to hear all about how awesome PC gaming is, plus a healthy dose of random Simpsons references.