Subnautica Studio Reveals Moonbreaker

gameinformer.com:

Hearthstone with miniatures. It’s an oversimplification, but if the idea captures your imagination, you recognize why the developers at Unknown Worlds think they’ve hit on something special. Best known for Subnautica, the team has been quietly working on a wholly digital miniatures game for the last five years. Built to emulate the collectability, customization, and tactical sophistication of the best tabletop miniature games, Moonbreaker aims to nail the magic and appeal of the real-life hobby, but with some of the approachability inherent to video games. After over an hour checking out the result, I’m convinced Unknown Worlds is onto something.

Set in an original sci-fi/fantasy universe built in partnership with celebrated author Brandon Sanderson, Moonbreaker explores a remote distant solar system called The Reaches, in which a multitude of moons carve intricate orbits around each other, each housing unique cultures and peoples. A rare resource called Cinder hides deep in the mantle of these moons and fuels the abilities of superpowered individuals called Solars. To survive, these Solars must consume more Cinder, so they gather a crew to their sides and set forth on their ships to gather the precious substance.

With that setup, players are dropped into the shoes of one of these ship captains. The fiction seems to borrow from sci-fi like Firefly and Guardians of the Galaxy and more terrestrial nods to properties like Pirates of the Caribbean. In the tense, one-vs-one battles (against AI or human players), you pit your captain and up to ten crew against your opponent and aim to take down the enemy captain by whatever means possible.

That fictional framework offers an excuse for Unknown Worlds to accomplish its real task