One theme runs clear through almost all video games, and that’s to make the player feel empowered. It seems hard not to imagine that feeling coming to the fore in Iron Galaxy’s latest title, Extinction, which has you defending a colorful desert world from titanic ogres. As humanity’s last home, you’ll have to cut their limbs and ultimately heads clean off, using your speed, strength, and special sword to make it happen.
Iron Galaxy is traditionally a company that ports games from consoles to PC and vice versa, though is perhaps most well known for developing the competitive two-button fighting game Divekick. Although it has released a few original titles over the years, Extinction is its first attempt at a game with this sort of scope and scale.
Extinction puts you in the sandals of Avil, the last in a line of heroic defenders of humanity. With otherworldly reflexes, strength and the ability to harness “rune strikes,” to enact huge damage against his enormous foes, Avil must defend the remnants of humanity to avoid the game’s name from becoming a reality.
Gameplay in Extinction will focus on combating the giant ogres, or Ravenii, and their armies. Although the giant monstrosities are the focus of your efforts, you’ll also have to contend with much faster, man-sized enemies, as well as flying golem creatures as they ravage cities and the surrounding countryside.
Combat is said to be fast and frantic, with Iron Galaxy claiming that no two battles will be alike — perhaps suggesting some sort of procedural generation to the battlefields and army designs of the enemy. Whether that’s the case or not though, we do know that environments will be fully destructible, with the chance to use them to give you a strategic advantage.
The fights in Extinction will be skill based too, we’re told, with environmental traversal a major component in the gameplay, with various skill trees offering different ways to progress through the game.
Players will have a story campaign to fight through as they look to rescue as many civilians as possible while taking down the enemy. There will also be side missions and quests to complete, expanding the game’s content and giving players with more time the chance to earn additional upgrades and unlocks to help them fight the ever more dangerous foes they come across.
Other modes include custom battles where you set the parameters of the location and foes you face, before taking the fight to them in your own style, as well as Extinction Mode, which acts as a survival simulator to see how long you can last.
Extinction is currently slated for release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in the first quarter of 2018, though we’ll get a better look at it at E3 in a couple of weeks.
