While Christmas may be two days away, Frost Giant decided Christmas Eve Eve is the day to tantalize us with some more concept art an announcement. This makes sense - Frost Giants are clearly winter beasts, and Christmas is the Winter holiday for many people.
Development Tournaments
To the surprise of some, the 1v1 component of Stormgate is already in a playable state - or at least playable enough for a holiday tournament. Kevin Dong is reportedly the favorite to win the event, but other developers (such as Trevor 'TorcH' Hosusten) will likely give him strong competition. Reportedly each group ran a pool, with the top player of each team advancing to a playoff bracket.
Surprisingly enough, neither Kevin nor Trevor find themselves as top seeds in this inaugural Yeti Cup. Outside the fact that they are running a tournament, the one key bit of information we can glean from this is the fact that Frost Giant is playing the game daily.
New Infernal Concept Art
We saw some of this art during the December update video, but the newsletter got us some more units (and buildings!) to take a look at. The variation of scale for the units is pretty interesting - it appears that the Resistance won't be the only faction that have some massive unit. The Resistance have their Gigamech and the Infernals have their....faceless centaur mech thing?
Infernal Lore
While the new concept art is exciting, we also get a new tidbit of the Infernals lore. Previously, the good folks at Frost Giant have stated that Stormgate will not be a game of black and white - instead, each faction will exist in shades of grey, with key characters swapping sides stories progress. That being said, all we've gotten about the Infernals until now has been a one-note story of intergalactic domination. Now we have at least a hint towards their motivation - "they believe they're serving a greater purpose: that strength in numbers and powerful magic will be necessary to save the universe." From what?
Resistance Concepts
We're not totally sure what it is, but Frost Giant did grace us with a new screenshot of ingame assets - some sort of Resistance mech fabricator, maybe?
Not only that, we get to see concept art of a Resistance building in construction. As the Stormgate takes place in a "post post apocalyptic" timeline, the majority of the Resistance tech is produced by "future printing technology," to quote Communications Director Gerald Villoria. It appears that this building under construction is same building in the screenshot above.
Atmospheric Ambiance
Blizzard (and "Blizzard-like") games have long been known for their ambiance - I'm sure we all love the Tastelope and Artosilope from some SC2 maps (and the cleaning bots!) Frost Giant respects this history of humor, and so has furnished us with a wonderfully angry chicken to grace our screens. Even better, it seems that obsessive clicking may produce a similarly messy result.
Music
Finally, we learned that Tracy W. Bush (of Starcraft Terran music fame) will be collaborating with Frost Giant to define the sound of the Human Resistance. With a talent like that, seems like the soundscape is in good hands!
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!
Frost Giant is also asking for names for our favorite little infernal worker - you can email them at pr@frostgiantstudios.com