We have been following the development of Ara: History Untold ever since it was first announced two years ago today as part of Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase. Today, Microsoft and developer Oxide Games have finally announced the turn-based grand strategy game will launch on September 24 on the Microsoft Store and Steam and will be a Day One release for PC Game Pass.
Innovative Multiplayer Features
In a post on the Xbox Wire blog, and also on the latest Xbox Podcast, we get some more info on the game, including some interesting multiplayer features. The game uses Simultaneous Turns which lets all online players resolve their turns all at once, instead of having to watch for each player to complete their turn. Brian Stone, the Head of the game for Xbox Game Studios, stated that all of the processing for those turns are handled by Microsoft’s Azure Cloud service. He added:
Anybody in any game can hot join, in or out. You can run games at any pace you want. If you want to play a game like one turn a day or one turn every 30 seconds. It doesn’t matter. You can do that. You don’t need to worry about who’s hosting — it’s like almost unlimited flexibility in terms of how you play.
If a player leaves in the middle of a multiplayer match, the game will create an AI player that will take over your spot in the match.
Historical Leaders and Unique Traits
The game also lets players pick which historical Leader they wish to play. Oxide Games president Marc Meyer stated:
They’ve got these set of traits that they share with each other and they kind of dictate a little bit of the underlying pieces of their personality and they dictate how they’re going to get along with each other… It lets us have a huge variety in the different leaders that we offer and so that playing each one of them is very different.
In addition, the latest Ara: History Untold video dev diary is live, with Oxide Games Director of Production Satch Puri answering questions from fans. Oxide plans to launch its next closed Technical Alpha for the game later in June.
