Company Of Heroes devs reveal B-movie version of Advance Wars – the first Relic Labs experiment

It was only last week that newly Sega-less Company Of Heroes developer Relic Entertainment announced plans for various smaller strategy game projects. Now, here we are with Earth Vs Mars, a boldly-coloured B-movie homage to Advance Wars in which you can splice units with animals to create tactical monstrosities such as “Squirrel-Cows” and “Cheetah-Flies”. Advance Wars aside, the new game harkens back to Relic’s 2003 RTS oddity Impossible Creatures. The trailer below doesn’t contain any Chihuahua Whales, but it’s hopefully just a matter of time.

Earth vs Mars looks to handle very similarly to Nintendo’s turn-based strategy opus. The maps are grids, and clashes between units play out as jazzy split-view pop-ups. Units have unique abilities, and there are commanders that have passive and active traits. The game’s splicing mechanic lets you lather all this up with some funky genetic hybridisation. Rhino infantry, for example, appears to have the muscle to knock enemies back a square.

It’ll include a single player narrative campaign with “over” 30 missions (please, developers, please just say “around” or “approximately”), together with online PvP in which you can play as either Earthlings or Martians, an AI versus mode and a map editor. All the expected strata-me-doodle fixtures.

Earth vs Mars is the very first Relic Labs game. According to the Steam page, these “will differ from our traditional, big bread-and-butter RTS games (which we’ll continue to support and develop)” and “allow us to explore new sub-genres, experiment, get our creative juices going, and release games more frequently.” I suspect that last part about frequency is the crucial load-bearing fixture, here.

Find out more on Steam. I’m not massively blown away by that splicing gimmick, but the presentation reminds me just a smidgeon of Kaiju Wars, an unexpected strategy game pleasure. RPS didn’t review Kaiju Wars because the editors of the era (2022) were a bunch of gadabouts and chancers. So here’s my, ugh, Eurogamer review instead. If you’re keen to pursue peaceful Earth-Mars relations, perhaps you’d like to build some monorails.