It’s been a little quiet on planet Stardock since the Elemental launch catastrophe and the divisive sale of Impulse to Gamestop, but they’ve quietly been staying true to their pledge to redeem their ambitious fantasy 4X game. Sequel Fallen Enchantress is now at alpha stage, and looking pretty delicious too mine hungry eye. Stardock boss Brad Wardell has just snuck out a video, with commentary, showing what they’re up to in this follow-up/reboot. The interface is much improved, the AI’s been overhauled, hopefully it’s a whole lot less buggy and… well, this entirely looks like my sort of thing. Meantime, I’m sniffing at Paradox’s Warlock, which does some vaguely similar stuff (but in a much more Civ-like way), so 2012 looks like a year for being spoiled for fantasy strategy choice.





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I particularly like how it switches to a sort of cloth map view of the world when you zoom out. It knows its audience, I think.

Without wanting to sound like a hopeless optimist, I am entirely convinced that Stardock will move heaven, Earth and Hull to make sure this only launches once it’s in the finest of health. A couple of years ago they were about to be the new kings of strategy, and no doubt they want that to happen again. Really looking forward to having a crack at Fallen Enchantress.

No fixed release date yet, as far as I can tell, but there’s a long breakdown of what to expect from the game and a close look at some of its features here.