Age of Wonders Goes Sci-Fi After 20 Years in Fantasy

Since 1999, Age of Wonders’ turn-based strategy games have always found a comfortable home in high fantasy; dragons, lizardmen, and all sorts of elemental magic abound within the fictional world that serves as the setting of the first Age of Wonders and its three successors. For two decades, players have led wars between the world’s factions and global alliances, comprised of races like elves, humans, and halflings. Developers Triumph Studios took Age of Wonders’ lore seriously and wrote dense stories that spanned centuries.

This year, however, Triumph is dipping their toes in new waters. Age of Wonders: Planetfall pivots from the series’ long-held allegiance to fantasy and instead wholly embraces a new sci-fi setting. Set in a universe coping with the aftermath of a fallen galactic empire, Planetfall goes all in on the series’ new genre while still providing the narrative depth for which the series is known.

Game Director Lennart Sas explained that the team found it natural to apply Age of Wonders’ to a new genre. “Age of Wonders is a turn-based strategy series where players build empires on the ‘world map layer’ and fight large battles in the ‘tactical layer,’” Sas said. “The sweeping scope of this type of game is a great fit for sci-fi, which deals with grand concepts concerning the future of mankind.”  

Planetfall opens on the player landing on a planet that formerly belonged to the Star Union, a galactic empire that shattered long ago and left several ruins and clues about its history in its wake. The remaining survivors have banded together in factions competing for control of the planet’s sectors.

In spite of its bleak premise, Planetfall looks surprisingly vibrant and vivid. “For the world-building of Planetfall, we took inspiration from ‘70s and ‘80s sci-fi pop culture, when the future was bright and colorful,” Sas said. “People faced the future with bravado.”

These visuals contrast heavily against the tone set by the game’s narrative. Players are meant to be curious about the fall of the Star Union, developing their colonies in tandem with their research into the old empire and its mysterious history. Such research not only fills them in on Planetfall’s lore but also grants them access to new technologies, units, and special operations.

Overall, Planetfall’s narrative universe is vast, richly detailed, and on par with that of Age of Wonders’ previous entries. Examples of themes found in Planetfall include the emergence of new cybernetic technologies, the automation of labor and production via machines, and the disastrous effects of climate change.

Sas explained that the game’s factions correspond to real-world postulations about humanity’s future; one faction might embrace humanity’s transition into cyborg-dom, while another might seek to fuse themselves with alien parasites.

“We’ve been having a lot of fun taking futurists’ dystopian and transhuman scenarios and adapting them (often twisting them) to fit our universe,” Sas said. “They are a means of setting up conflict within the game and a bountiful source of dark humor.”

Triumph doesn’t intend for Age of Wonders: Planetfall’s players to take its dystopian imagination of humanity’s future too seriously, however. Sas insisted that the game isn’t all doom and gloom despite being informed by real-world issues and concerns.

“It’s colorful stuff, in which warrior women ride gene-modded dinos with lasers into battle against cyber-zombies,” Sas said. “If aspects make people think of where our own world might be headed, then great, but the main function is to entertain.”

Otherwise, Age of Wonders’ gameplay remains largely similar to that of the previous entries. The switch to sci-fi, however, afforded Triumph the ability to rejigger tactical combat, which has been adjusted to focus more on ranged weaponry to accommodate Planetfall’s emphasis on technological warfare and what Sas characterizes as “doomsday weapons.”

Additionally, land is now broken up into “sectors,” which each have special natural features or landmarks. Earning a “territory victory” requires the player to conquer a certain percentage of the planet’s sectors, while other victories are determined by things like tech research and diplomacy.

Introducing a time-honored series to a completely new genre is no easy task. “Sci-fi requires designers to put more effort into making things believable, extrapolating real-world tech and social trends into a captivating future realm,” Sas explained. With hundreds of units and abilities, several maps, and complex tech trees to design, creating an entire narrative universe must have taken a lot. 

Triumph ultimately embraced their new direction and developed a game that meaningfully engages its genre in its systems rather than treating it as purely decorative. “We’d like to thank the Intel Tech department for assisting us in the optimization of Age of Wonders: Planetfall and for the integrated chipsets,” Sas added.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall was released on PC on August 6, 2019.