TalonSoft's Spring Lineup

Early last week, TalonSoft founder and president Jim Rose dropped by the GameSpot offices to show off the games his company plans to release in the coming months. When it was founded in 1995, TalonSoft was primarily a developer and publisher of realistic war simulators. Since that time the company has expanded its focus to cover a broader range of wargames, and it is now a leading publisher of all things war related, be it an ultra-realistic turn-based strategy or a World War I action game in an alternate universe.

This season, TalonSoft is readying three games for publication. Here's a quick rundown of each:

Flying HeroesDeveloped by Illusion Softworks, the same team that had worked on Hidden & Dangerous, Flying Heroes is a 3D action game set in a world with heavy fantasy overtones. Airships, floating castles, and mystical temples are just some of the ten environments to be found in this game. The player will play as one of the game's four clans: sky knights, lizard raiders, magion, or hammercraft. Each clan has its own strengths, weaknesses, and eight different flying machines - the central focus of Flying Heroes. Ranging from magical devices to dragon-like creatures, these flying machines can be upgraded with enhanced armor and weapons, and then pit against up to three other AI or human players in head-to-head battles that are best likened to Quake III Arena, according to Rose. Flying Heroes has been in development for twelve months, and is scheduled for a mid-summer 2000 release.

Martian GothicBest described as a mix between Resident Evil and Space Quest, Martian Gothic places players on Mars in the year 2019. Like most survival-horror games, Martian Gothic features 3D character models set against prerendered 2D backgrounds. Players take control of a three-member investigative team that has landed on a NASA Martian base to investigate a deadly bacteria outbreak, only to find the base's inhabitants have mutated into zombie-like creatures. Players will be able to switch between the game's three characters in real-time to better explore the game's expansive levels in their quest to get out alive. Creative Reality is wrapping up development on Martian Gothic, and the game is expected to be on store shelves in late April 2000.

War MonkeysAlong the same vein as Legion and Warcraft III comes this sci-fi real-time strategy from Silicon Dreams. Unlike standard RTS games, War Monkeys stresses the importance of unit experience and rewards players who cultivate their armies by making them stronger, harder to hit, and so on - a far cry from the expendable units found in traditional real-time strategies. War Monkeys is powered by an impressive 3D engine that can display up to 200 individual units onscreen at once and can mimic the size of battlefields to 25 square kilometers. War Monkeys will feature the voice talent of Charleston Heston and an industrial soundtrack courtesy of Fatboy Slim. The game is expected to release for the PC toward the end of July 2000, and a PlayStation2 port is also in the works for a possible late 2000/early 2001 release.