The Homeworld 3 demo makes me feel a little concerned about the RTS legend
Blackbird Interactive just released a demo for Homeworld 3, the long-awaited third (and perhaps final?) installment of the legendary RTS franchise. The demo is available until February 15 Steam and the Epic games storehighlights the game’s roguelike ‘War Games’ mode, allowing you and your friends to play increasingly difficult levels with random objectives and enemies.
I spent several hours with the demo, which gives a small vertical of what we can expect when the game releases on March 8. The demo features a shortened version of the War Games mode with only three stages, but does include the full progression system that will be present in the retail version of Homeworld 3, which allows you to unlock new ships and cosmetics. As an added bonus, any progress players make during the demo will carry over to the retail version of the game.
The demo serves as an excellent showcase of it Homeworld 3‘s technical and gameplay improvements, but some frustrating issues have somewhat shaken my confidence in studio Blackbird’s abilities to deliver a sequel to a beloved franchise tied to more than two decades of anticipation.
While the demo may be representative of an older version of the game, I encountered issues such as cumbersome camera controls and questionable pathfinding. An important addition Homeworld 3 is terrain in space that is intended to give your units a tactical advantage. However, this feature often caused my units to have difficulty finding the most direct route to an objective. The in-game camera also struggles to provide the best view, often clipping into terrain and obscuring units. This problem is exacerbated by the painfully slow controls, which rotate and zoom at a glacial pace even when their sensitivity is increased. It’s possible that these concerns have already been addressed by Blackbird Interactive, but seeing them in the demo made me question the kind of game we should be expecting in about four weeks.
Despite the problems, I still enjoyed it Homeworld 3 demo and respect the enormous effort Blackbird Interactive puts into this title. If you want to try out the game for yourself, make sure to check out the demo before it leaves on February 15.