Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, even indie developers can quickly build good-looking games.
Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 is still so new that hardly any games have been released with it. Fortnite, the in-house prodigy, already uses the technology in the Battle Royale. And the long list future Third-party titles with the modern code framework are growing every day.
This is now joined by a new indie game that doesn’t want to look like a small and unknown developer studio at all: Trench Tales. The third-person shooter focuses on single players and is set in World War I, but also mixes fantasy elements such as monster opponents into the recipe. The whole thing looks terrifyingly good.
This is what Trench Tales’ first gameplay looks like
The creators of Trench Tales share development progress via their Twitter account. There are many gray boxed videos where they demonstrate certain technical elements of the shooter. For example, how the water in the trenches reacts to shelling:
link to Twitter content
However, there are already scenes that look like finished trailers. A comprehensive gameplay video, which also includes the official introductory trailer, can be viewed on the GameV YouTube channel.
It shows how detailed and well lit the shooter already looks. The physics and hit feedback are brutal. Trench Tales creates a lot of atmosphere and gives the impression of a high-quality production for long stretches, even if some things clearly indicate the early stage of development:
link to YouTube content
The Unreal Engine 5 makes it easy for small studios to create respectable material in a short time with few resources of their own. Ready-made building blocks can be bought in the Asset Store and integrated into your own game. To what extent the developers of Trench Tales make use of it is difficult to estimate at the moment.
However, this approach also contains potential pitfalls, as this notable case shows:
What kind of game will Trench Tales be?
A lot of information about what Trench Tales actually wants to be for a game is not yet available. A Steam page is said to be coming soon, which rules out an exclusive release on the Epic Store as of now.
The footage suggests a single-player shooter (possibly with a co-op option) in a world war scenario enriched with fantasy elements. As a warrior you go through the infamous trenches while zombie soldiers hunt you down. Lots of shooting and throwing grenades.
1:48
War Hospital: Dark building game lets you manage a hospital in WW1
Meanwhile, the game in the video above is also about the First World War, but puts you in charge of a hospital that you have to build and manage in building game style.
What do you think of the Trench Tales material shown? Does this create a real challenger in the shooter genre, or do you prefer to keep your hopes low? Let us know what you think in the comments!
