The MOBA craze continues, as more games are entering into it, with Bandai Namco tossing their own competitor into the rink with Supernova. While we've seen companies move more towards Hero Shooters and some big MOBA attempts fail (Infinite Crisis' I'm looking at you), the MOBA genre is still attracting plenty of new entrants to it.
Unlike some MOBA's that come out, (Infinite Crisis' please come down for your lifetime achievement award on MOBA failure) Supernova appears to be trying to innovate on the genre some by going more back to the RTS roots. While MOBA's are a more action focused RTS child in general, Supernova wants to bring back some of the unity management from RTS' to help make a more unique experience. In Supernova you are able to, beyond your hero, build, upgrade, and command your minions against your opponent to make up a key part of the game. While in most MOBA's minions exist for early fodder, here it appears there will be more variety in the lane units that you can deploy.
Supernova is set in a sci-fi setting where you can play as one of any number of human or alien commanders each with their own abilities. To help further customization you can gather crafting materials to craft accessories between matches, and during matches level up. You'll be dealing with a variety of new technologies and life forms not seen elsewhere, and the science fiction aspect is different for the genre that is often just using fantasy.
To what should be as no one's surprise, Bandai Namco is targeting esports with Supernova and is claiming they will integrate a large amount of in-game esport features. Exactly how this will work isn't really clarified, but one images that at the very least will be in game voice chat with additions of things like replay, matchmaking, rankings, and tournaments to come.
Supernova is currently in Alpha and will be released sometime this quarter for PC.
Oh? You want some screenshots too? I guess we can do that!
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