Roccat Studios is widely known as one of the major peripheral makers in the PC gaming market, with its portfolio of high-quality products spanning from gaming mice to mechanical keyboards to headphones and more. But like several of its competitors, Roccat wants to branch out into other PC gaming-related areas, and is doing so starting with Roccat Games Studio and its very first PC game called Sick City. Nope, we didn’t see that one coming.
“Sick City is our interpretation of a modern real-time tactical combat game,” the company told Digital Trends. “It combines the strengths of tactical classics like Commandos‘ exciting espionage maneuvers and the direct action of Company of Heroes without time-consuming foundation construction, topped with a dose of Warcraft 3’s unique heroes and powerful abilities.”
Serving as part of Roccat’s 10-year anniversary celebration, Sick City is described as a “post-apocalyptic battle” on the streets of Sick City. Players are thrown into a 4×4 squad-based fight to control the city and a mysterious crystalline energy source called Aimo. Unfortunately, Roccat doesn’t reveal any specifics about the game other than it will have two factions (“Kidz” shown below, “Legion” shown above), various game modes, characters, and maps.
“Recently with products like the Sova and the Modulok, Roccat has had very good experiences with product feedback and community involvement,” the company added. “Although we’ve always made a large effort to listen to our customers, we have really begun to bring our audience closer to our development process than ever before. This is what really inspired us as it’s something we felt was lacking in games today.”
That said, PC gamers can directly impact the development of Sick City. Starting in a closed alpha this June, Roccat will call on “early development veterans” to provide feedback and help smash game-stopping bugs. After that, Sick City will move into Early Access mode so that all PC gamers can provide their input and help shape the game.
As for additional information about the new Roccat Games Studio arm, Roccat wouldn’t cough up any details other than that the new studio will operate independently. Roccat also wouldn’t say when the new studio came online and started developing Sick City. However, according to Roccat, development has been going on for quite a while now.
The exact date of when the closed alpha begins is unknown, but PC gamers can sign up now by heading over to the Sick City website and filling out the “Join Us Now” form. The Early Access version will also be distributed through the website “hopefully” during the Gamescom convention starting August 22. After that, the game will eventually land on Steam.
