Veteran real-time strategy studio Petroglyph has released a cute new RTS in Early Access on Steam: 9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far is a classic-style setup of building bases, cranking out units, and battering your enemy from every direction as fast as you can. It’s just the kind of thing you’d expect from a studio founded by people who worked on the original Command & Conquer series at Westwood, and who were behind the Command & Conquer remasters a few years back.
9-Bit Armies is the sequel to Petroglyph’s prior series of games, 8-Bit Armies, which had a fantasy spinoff, 8-Bit Hordes, and sci-fi spinoff called 8-Bit Invaders.
The new game supports two-player cooperative mode and an army-wide veterancy system encouraging you to play side missions during the campaign. The game maps are quite large, to take advantage of air and sea units, and Petroglyph says that the AI is written from the ground up to be challenging—they even brag that it doesn’t cheat, a rarity for RTS CPU players.
The release has Steam Workshop integration, letting you more easily share maps and the like with others. It plays with up to eight players in online skirmish. You can find 9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far on Steam.