Bohemia are the latest to try to make the RTS/FPS hybrid happen, bless them

I’m old enough to remember Battlezone (1998) and Command & Conquer: Renegage and the years since are littered with umpteen games that try to combine RTS commanding with FPS conquering. The latest to try is Silica, from Arma 3 developers Bohemia Interactive. You’ll find the announcement trailer and its many crabs below.

Silica is set on a “seemingly barren” distant planet humans are attempting to mine for precious resources. Of course, instead of being barren, it’s full of angry, chitinous many-mouthed crabs. You can then either assume the role of commander and battle from above, or switch to a first-person view to fight on foot or from the cockpit of several types of vehicle.

This is the first project to spill out from Bohemia Incubator, the DayZ developer’s indie publishing label, and Silica is mostly the work of one person, Martin “Dram” Melichárek. Melichárek was previously the lead developer on Bohemia’s Take On Mars.

Although best known for their military sims, Silica isn’t Bohemia’s first time dabbling in science fiction or even the RTS/FPS hybrid. Back in 2012 they released Carrier Command: Gaea Missionwhich while flawed and limited showed some promise.

Perhaps Silica will fulfill that promise. Its big crabs do look good, and it does go a step further than Gaea Mission by having multiplayer modes as well as singleplayer. Still, I can’t help but think of all the previous games I’ve played that have tried to do two genres at the same time and ended up not doing either well. Gettysburg: Armored Warfare was mostly made by one person, too, you know.

Silica’s Steam page is live now and it’ll launch into early access “soon”. Bohemia plan to keep it in early access for 9-12 months.