Frost Giant @ Gamescom: Infernals Revealed and the Chainsmokers!

For most of Stormgate’s development, its been all about the Vanguard – the remnants of humanity banding together in the face of an interdimensional invasion. Yes, we’ve seen some concept art of the Infernals and some tidbits about their lore, but pretty much everything in-game has been Vanguard.

That changed today with the formal introduction of the Infernals at Gamescom 2023. In a one minute video, we got our first look at 3 infernal units – the imp worker, the Brute, and the Fiend, as well as some awesome announcements on the audio side of things.

New Units

Gamescom provided a first glance at three of the units that the Infernals will be able to leverage in their battle for Earth – the Imp worker, the Brute, and the Fiends that erupt from the Brute’s chest.

‘Wimpy the Impy,’ as some members of the community have taken to calling the infernal worker, captured the hearts of Stormgate fans when it’s first concept art was released last year. This time, we get to see it in it’s natural habitat, which apparently includes an ability to set itself on fire in a suicidal ‘Imp-losion’. It should also be noted that the imps will “summon” Infernal structures instead of constructing them directly. It remains to be seen whether this is a protoss-like building mechanic (with Imps are only needed to start construction), or whether they’ll be needed for the entire process.

We also got a look at two units for the price of one – the Brute and Fiend. The Infernals are characterized by the desire for victory “at any cost,” and this includes literally ripping themselves in half to better attack the enemy. The Brute is a beefy melee unit with a nasty surprise, as players will be able to turn that single brute into two fast-moving Fiends. It’s going to be interesting to see if the Brutes will be able to do anything more than ripping themselves asunder, but this provides a tremendous opportunity for skill expression – players will likely want to let Brutes get as low as possible before transforming into Fiends, turning this into something like a bit of one-time transfuse micro.

Frost Giant also provided the first look at something called the “Shroud,” a mechanic unique to the Infernal faction. Per Frost Giant, it is a ‘dark, swirling field of magic energy produced by key Infernal structures, allowing for powerful Rituals to be cast and providing significant advantages to any Infernal units within it.’ It isn’t clear what those Rituals will be, or what these advantages will be yet, but it does appear that one of those ‘key structures’ will be some sort of turret – the brief snapshot of a battle between Infernal and Vanguard has what looks like slow moving projectiles firing from the structure at Vanguard units.

Music Updates

Frost Giant also announced that they have been consulting with The Chainsmokers as they work to develop Stormgate’s soundtrack. They also added Frank Klepacki (of Command and Conquer fame) to the already stacked music team of Tracy W Bush (Starcraft’s Terran music) and Audio Director Alexander Brandon. On top of that, they teased some very familiar voice acting talent for some of the characters – with a first listen to the voice of Dagon, the assumed leader of the Infernals on Earth. His voice certainly sounds familiar!

Getting Involved

As always, if you want to engage with the Frost Giant developers and get information from them as they post it, you should sign up for their newsletter, head on over to /r/Stormgate on reddit, and sign up for the beta and wishlist the game on steam!