With the devs behind RimWorld gearing up for their next game with a recent engine switch, it’d be entirely fair if you were hankering for something new (if still familiar enough) yourself. Trailblazers: Into The March is one such game, having introduced itself to us earlier this year, a mishmash of the aforementioned colony sim, Nausicaa, Moebius, Andrei Tarkovski, Jeff Vandermeer, and FTL: Faster Than Light by Edwin’s measure. And now you don’t just have to look at its trailers, because there’s a demo for you to have a go at.
“In today’s demo, we have packed in so much for you to explore. From overcoming dangerous excursions to battling threatening foes,” explain developer Strangers of the demo. “Take on contracts from the fixer and build out your perfect Trailblazing crew!” If you’ve not actually clocked roguelite colony-sim Trailblazer before today, you are said titular Trailblazer, a captain of a landship which are essentially big, honking, vaguely animal-shaped, Shadow of the Colossus sized crafts you pilot across the ground, taking on similar such opposing vessels.
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Your Landship is customizable, and it must be filled with all sorts of simulated crew members, each complete with their own backgrounds and abilities. In the macro, combat sees you commanding your ship in real-time action battles, with the option of tactical pause to be, well, tactical with. In the micro, you command your crew to see through said battles. There’s a big ole world to explore (the titular March), where you’ll be “encountering enigmatic wonders and unpredictable events along the way,” so says the game’s Steam page.
It’s got a funny mix of art too. When looking at all of your crew members aboard your ship, they resemble those tiny toy wooden puppets that collapse when you press a button beneath them. Their character portraits are a lot more detailed, but more obviously procedurally (not AI) generated, with some lush recurring character NPC portraits to show how beautiful this game can get. Neat stuff! No release date just yet, but you can check out that demo, or just throw it a wishlist, on Steam.
