- Earthbreakers 2021 Update - 12 April 2021
Everyone at Petroglyph sincerely appreciates all of your support and enthusiasm for Earthbreakers. Since starting this project last year we have been approached by a publisher to work on an exciting new game that has required all our available resources, including the majority of the Earthbreakers team. This means that for now, we need to place Earthbreakers on hold while we focus our full attention in making this new project as great as it can be. We still believe in Earthbreakers and will keep you appraised as to when we will resume development.
- Developer Diary #8 - 20 August 2020
Last time we talked about the base, its structures and how they will affect the flow of the game. This time we want to talk about the second section we mentioned in the previous design diary: Classes. Our demo had five playable classes and while we are brainstorming new classes for the mix, our current focus is on bringing more polish to the five classes we have. The demo classes were what we could call the minimum possible to play the game. That is, they can move around, fire a weapon, kill other players and die. While the main weapons themselves have to be fun to play with, they aren't the whole vision for the classes we expect to have in the final game. We want to give each class a suite of abilities that define that class' role and give you a lot of options for reacting to everything happening in the game. Across the board, we are putting a lot of effort into getting our gunplay rig…
- Developer Diary #7 - 30 July 2020
Greetings Earthbreakers fans! Previously we talked about how much feedback we received from the Steam Fest demo, and talked a little bit about where that feedback fell with respect to the game. This time, we thought you might like to hear about what we're actually DOING with that feedback. Game development is an iterative process. For Earthbreakers, we break the design into sections and then try to layer in systems as we go. For example, the demo had base-building and classes, but it wasn't the full experience we know we want to end up with at launch. Going forward, we are breaking down the game into three basic sections: the base, the classes, and depth. Bases revolve around anything to do with base building and all of the things base building controls like the flow of power progression and tech. Classes include everything class and combat-related, including new abilities, alternate fi…
- Developer Diary #6 - 15 July 2020
Hey everyone! For this diary, we are going to take a deeper look at the Engineer class and its role in the larger picture. The Engineer class plays primarily as a support to your teammates on the field. A few key engineers can increase longevity of your teammates and assets on the field - this can make a big difference in crucial battles, both offensively and defensively. Having coordinated Engineers on a team is essential to coming out victorious. Equipped with a repair gun, the Engineer can repair fellow infantry, vehicles, and structures. Early game this can create an advantage where teammates can press early and earn more cash from kill bounties while getting repaired. The repair gun locks on from a certain range, and can also be used to target enemies and do a small amount of damage - which is great for chasing down specialized classes such as a Sniper or other Engineers. Additiona…
- Earthbreakers Prototype Feedback Received! - 26 June 2020
Phew what a week! Steamfest is over, and we had a great time playing with everyone, and hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did! Here is a breakdown of class usage for those that are curious: We received an amazing amount of feedback and are nearly finished cataloging all of it. That’s right, we have been going through everything from Steam, to Discord and comments on Twitch, and many direct messages, line by line. We have found a few trends, some of which I will discuss briefly. Firstly the most common question I have been asked is when everyone can play again. The answer is we’re not sure. However we do focus testing from time to time and you may be able to get involved! Check out and participate in our Discord discussions, and when the time is right we may call on you to jump in for some matches! Now onto some of the feedback. We received a lot of feedback on movement speeds, in th…
- Developer Diary #5 - 11 June 2020
Very soon you will be able to play our prototype of Earthbreakers. This early look, however, is just a small slice of where we want to be in the final product. In the prototype you will see the HQ, Factory and Refinery buildings, but there are at least three more structures that will be present in the final game. As in RTS games, each of these structures will have a unique purpose - something they will contribute to your team, and something you will lose if the structure is destroyed. In the prototype, the HQ will also house all of the upgrades you can buy, but in the final game, those upgrades will be distributed to the correct structures - this will be explained more below. Let's start with the structures you will see in the prototype. The HQ, as in most RTS games, is the cornerstone of your base. It acts as the central command and "manager" for the rest of the structures. As such, if…
- Earthbreakers is coming to the Summer Game Festival on June 16th! - 8 June 2020
Hey Earthbreakers! Since our initial announcement in late 2019, we have been working diligently with a small group of our Petroglyph community to develop the base vs. base gameplay promised in our sneak peek trailer. We’re now at a stage of development with Earthbreakers that we can share our latest progress with a larger audience first-hand. This means you! On June 16th at 10:00am we will be releasing a playable prototype of Earthbreakers to the public for the first time. This will be your best chance to play the game, interact directly with the team, and providing feedback to help us craft our next-gen RTS/FPS hybrid. We’re excited to hear your initial feedback and will be playing and talking with everyone daily to get your thoughts. We’ll also ask you to take a short survey so that we can collate your feedback for distribution to the engineering, design, and art teams. We highly reco…
- Live Stream and Play with the Devs! - 8 June 2020
Hey Earthbreakers! Watch members of our design team play with the rest of the community in a live stream of our newest game on Wednesday, June 17th at 5pm PST. Earthbreakers is a team-vs-team First-Person Shooter (FPS) that centers around Real-Time Strategy (RTS) base-vs-base combat. It is designed to combine the action of FPS with the base building strategy of RTS in a streamlined way. The goal is not to kill the opposing team’s soldiers, although there is plenty of opportunity for that, but to destroy the enemy base as in RTS games. This demo version shows the core foundation of that concept. The future holds more soldier classes, base structures, combat vehicles, and battlefields. Watching the devs play is the best way to get a handle on what makes this game so exciting and different from other FPS games. And, if you feel like jumping in and playing a bit yourself - you can do that t…
- What is Earthbreakers? - 1 June 2020
Earthbreakers is a team-vs-team First-Person Shooter (FPS) that centers around Real-Time Strategy (RTS) base-vs-base combat. It is designed to combine the action of FPS with the base building strategy of RTS in a streamlined way. The goal is not to kill the opposing team’s soldiers, although there is plenty of opportunity for that, but to destroy the enemy base as in RTS games. This demo version shows the core foundation of that concept. The future holds more soldier classes, base structures, combat vehicles, and battlefields.
- Developer Diary #4 - 27 May 2020
When starting to work on the music for Earthbreakers, we were wondering what would give this game some unique personality. I was thinking about what I enjoyed about FPS games, what I enjoyed about what I did with C&C Renegade long ago, but ultimately, I did not want to simply repeat myself. I prefer games having their own musical identity and not just being a copy of something else. The initial ideas started with trying something that sounded like a typical hybrid-music style of electronic and orchestra instrumentation, and it just fell a bit flat. This has just been done to death and didn’t feel particularly special. So we went back to the drawing board and came up with the idea about drawing influence from something like the Dusk til Dawn soundtrack. That in turn triggered some other ideas for me where I thought, what if I tried a blend of classic rock, rockabilly, blues, and early pu…
- Developer Diary #3 - 21 May 2020
INTRODUCTION Before going into design philosophy that guided the creation and balance of the Rocket Launcher, I should go over the general design philosophy for soldiers you can play. Earthbreakers uses a class-based soldier design. Your primary and secondary weapon and certain special abilities are baked into the class you choose to play. Switching classes in the middle of the match is allowed by returning to your base HQ. Sometimes this can be useful, but keep in mind that mid-match upgrades you purchase to improve your class apply only to that class. This means that switching your class early in a match is wiser than switching later after you’ve purchased many upgrades. Earthbreakers supports a strong rock-paper-scissors balancing model, but we are careful to make sure each class is always useful regardless of the tactical situation. If you like a particular soldier class, you can al…
- Developer Diary #2 - 14 May 2020
Developer Diary #2 - BASE BUILDING & PROGRESSION Hello and welcome to another Designer Diary! This week we thought we would take a more detailed dive into the base building and progression of the game. With respect to Earthbreakers, progression falls into two categories: Base Progression and Class Progression. Both allow your team to grow in power over time, ramping up speed at which you can assault the enemy base. Base progression is where most of the RTS elements come into play, while class progression favors more of the FPS elements. As with an RTS, you will have an assortment of structures that make up your base such as the HQ, Refinery, Barracks, Factory, etc. Each of these structures manages some aspect of the base: The HQ allows you to keep building and rebuilding structures, the Refinery controls the harvester and your income, the Factory builds vehicles, etc. Left to their own…
- Developer Diary #1 - 6 May 2020
Petroglyph Earthbreakers Developer Diary – March 6, 2020 Hello everyone and welcome to our first Earthbreakers Developer Diary! We are going to be doing regular Developer Diaries to let the community know what we’ve been working on. To this end, we want to give you direct insight and create an active dialogue for input of suggestions and ideas. Today we are going to focus mostly on what Earthbreakers is, where the idea came from, and our emphasis on how we are shaping it into its own identity. Firstly, Earthbreakers would likely fit into a Strategy-Shooter genre. As a team who has spent decades working in Real-Time Strategy, we wanted to bring that experience into the First Person Shooter genre to allow players to explore strategic decision making over the course of a match. Our core focus has been on team play through base building and progression in a fast-paced environment. As many o…
- Earthbreakers is an RTS-inspired FPS by ex-Westwood developers - 1 December 2019
Remember Command & Conquer: Renegade? It took the classic RTS series and transformed it into a shooter, letting you play as one of those all-action commando units—you know, the "I've got a present for ya!" guys. Now Petroglyph, a studio made up of ex-Westwood devs responsible for games like 8-Bit Invaders, Forged Battalion, and Grey Goo, are working on a game called Earthbreakers that could easily be a spiritual sequel to it. Earthbreakers is a multiplayer game where teams of infantry fight over a resource called Vilothyte crystals, which they use to construct and upgrade bases, vehicles, upgrades, and new infantry classes. It's basically an RTS as seen from the ground level of individual units who are out there protecting harvesters while they munch up fields of glowing resource rock.  It's got six driveable vehicles, 12 infantry classes, and 11 structures to…
- Petroglyph's Earthbreakers will meld RTS with FPS - 30 November 2019
What if RTS but you ditched the omniscient perspective for the humble vantage of a single unit? That’s part of the pitch for Earthbreakers , recently announced by Petroglyph. The Grey Goo studio are tossing a hefty helping of first-person action into a pot of already simmering resource collection and tactical building. They’re hoping the result “combines the most enjoyable elements of FPS and RTS”. (more…)
- Ex-Westwood Studios devs quietly announced a spiritual successor to Command & Conquer: Renegade - 30 November 2019
You'd be forgiven for missing it, but ex-Westwood Studios developers quietly announced a spiritual successor to Command & Conquer: Renegade this month. Petroglyph Games is the Los Angeles-based studio founded by the last group of ex-Westwood employees who left when EA shut what remained of the Command & Conquer developer down in 2003. Petroglyph has released a number of real-time strategy games over the years, including Star Wars: Empire at War, Rise of Immortals, Grey Goo and, most recently, Conan Unconquered. Read more
