Liquidation Key Art
Image: Divio & Microprose Software

There are few crowds in games tougher than real-time strategy fans. Even the most promising of games tends to crash on the rocks of player opinion. Recent releases like ZeroSpace and Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand have seen middling-to-poor responses, and high-profile titles like Stormgate have imploded catastrophically. So, I can't help but be curious when Liquidation (from fresh indie studio Divio) slips under the radar and is met with high praise for its early access debut, albeit just a few dozen user reviews thus far.

Looking like a fusion of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2, Liquidation is a horse that very few were betting on. The science-fantasy's Kickstarter failed despite asking for a meager £21,000, but the developers kept on trucking. Eventually, they attracted the attention of Microprose, the rebooted publisher trying to recapture the glory days of early PC strategy and simulation gaming. And it seems they bet well.

Set in a science-fantasy setting (which means mechs AND wizards), Liquidation follows the warring races of Veá - a dying planet - fighting over a life-sustaining substance, Quernium, that recently surfaced following a magical apocalypse. The factions at present are the Twilight Crusade (knights with swords and guns), the Scourge Alliance (Lamias and frog-people), and the Legion (demons and extradimensional nasties), all echoing both Starcraft and Warcraft factions in style and mechanics.

I've yet to play this one, but as befitting a Starcraft & Warcraft fusion, this seems like a very micromanagement-heavy game, with smaller unit counts and precise control needed. Hero units level up and gain new abilities given time, further adding to the plate-spinning needed to win in a closely matched fight. Early players report that beyond the solo campaign missions, PvP is surprisingly aggressive, with matches on smaller maps sometimes determined within minutes, although larger maps give more room to expand and build bases.

Liquidation was a quiet success when its demo (sadly unavailable now) debuted during the Steam Next Fest, and the early access version seems to be hitting the right notes for the notoriously picky RTS fanbase. The current version of the game contains three of four planned factions, 6 out of a planned 32 story missions, and an initial slice of skirmish, PvP and PvE maps, but there's still a long road ahead, and development is expected to continue until the second half of 2027 at the earliest.

Liquidation is out now on Steam for £19.80/$22, with a 10% launch discount running until August 18th. It seems to be off to a promising start, and I hope to get my hands on it soon for my own impressions, although I'm no competitive RTS expert by any means.