shrapnel posts

The game was announced over a year ago but today World Supremacy has found a publisher. Shrapnel Games has announced today that it will publish the global-themed strategy game title from Space Empires developer Malfador Machinations.

The old school strategy game, with the appropriate old school graphical look, the mutiplayer oriented title will let up to eight players fight over each other for control of the entire world with land, air, and sea units (and yes, nukes can be involved). The game is also supposed to be mod friendly so according to the press release any type of map can be made, saying, "Want to fight over the real world? Middle Earth? The world of the Destroymen series? Create and conquer. " The title went into closed beta testing earlier this month. World Supremacy is scheduled for release sometime later this year.

More and more we are seeing games get adapted into comic books. The latest such project is for Blacklight: Tango Down, the upcoming downloadable first person shooter from developer Zombie Studios and publisher Ignition Entertainment. A one-shot comic based on the game will be released by publisher Storm Lion in July. The story was written by Zombie's founder Mark Long.

Zombie already has some experience in comics, The developer also created the story and concepts for Radical Entertainment's sci-fi series Shrapnel. One four part mini-series was released in 2009 and a second three issue mini-series is scheduled to launch later this May.

A few months ago we reported that Zombie Studios was working on a new first person shooter called Blacklight (which is also being made as a comic book and movie property at Fox). At the time Zombie's president Mark Long also told us about their Shrapnel comic book that they created and which is being published by Radical Comics. The sci-fi action comic also shares the name of a game that Zombie was developing several years ago but later put on hold.

Today The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Zombie Studios is once again planning to release a game with the Shrapnel title and like Blacklight a movie version is in the works as well. The movie rights to Shrapnel have been bought by director Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard).

The comic book version of Shrapnel is highly different than Zombie's previously announced game, which took place in the near future. The comic book (and the new game and movie) takes place in the far future where humanity has colonized the solar system but is now under brutal rule. An ex-Space Marine on Venus is trying to fight off the Solar Allliance with their own rebellion. There's no word on when the Shrapnel movie or game will be released.

You have read a lot about Blacklight already but Big Download decided to get even more info from Mark Long, the president of the game's developer at Zombie Studios.

Blacklight sounds like a game that's trying to mix sci-fi elements with more realistic shooters. How hard is it for you guys to keep that balance and make the game feel real while at the same time give it a kind of sci-fi "wow" factor?

We made a major design goal of the game and story to be "science fact", rather than science fiction. So we searched for far out weapons research, like in ultrasonic technology, and take it to its realistic limit - a non-lethal "ultrasonic launcher", for example. Which is cool because they're sound waves, so they can be bounced off of hard surfaces. You can bounce a shot off a wall to knock down an enemy you can't get a line of sight on. Or generate a sonic force field that slows down an enemy in an ambush.