Demigod

To most people, Demigod is little more than a fleeting curiosity, a name murmured zealously only by a handful of enlightened fans. To those people however, Demigod represents a brave step towards a more multiplayer-centric game-play experience, blending all the elements of action, strategy and team-based games that make them ideal for the competitive, online environment.

“Our hope is to make Demigod the preeminent multiplayer strategy game for tournaments and such since the actual game-play supports a lot more team mechanics than the traditional Starcraft or even Supreme Commander model would.” – Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Corporation Inc.

Demigod at a Glance

Demigod is an Action / Strategy hybrid (more on this later) that is under development by Gas Powered Games (of Supreme Commander fame) and will be published by Stardock (Sins of a Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations II). The game is tentatively scheduled to be released in March ‘09, and the first stage of the beta – which is open to anyone that pre-orders beforehand – begins early next month (September ’08). This will be the first time that the public en masse will have a chance to try out Demigod’s fabled, almost genre-defying game-play.

Speaking of genre, this has to be Demigod’s most vexing quality. In fact, trying to fit Demigod into a genre is ultimately a futile endeavour; even if you managed to think up a descriptive category, people would still have no idea what the game was like to play.

The easiest way to describe Demigod would be to say that it’s similar to the immensely popular Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients (DotA): you control a hero (or demigod in this case) using standard RTS controls (left-click to select things, right-click to move/attack, hotkeys to use abilities etc.). You, and a team of up to five other players, start next to your stronghold, and the aim of the game is to destroy the enemy team’s stronghold, which is typically on the other side of the playing area. To aid you, there are a few portals near you stronghold, which continually spawn units that automatically head towards the enemy base down various paths. These units are AI-controlled, so it is your job to assist them as they charge into battle. As with DotA, you can purchase equipment using money that you have earned in battle to increase the power of your demigod. Furthermore, as you fight, you will level up, increasing your demigod’s hit points, damage etc. and unlocking various abilities from a skill tree. If your demigod dies, then you’re out of the game for a short while until you re-spawn at your stronghold.

From the above definition, one would assume that Demigod is nothing more than a DotA clone.

This is far from the truth.