MOONBREAKER

Subnautica's developer turns its hand to tabletop-inspired tactics

Developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment

Publisher Krafton

Format PC

Origin US

Release September 29 (Early Access)

For a certain subset of Warhammer players, the tabletop game is known simply as 'The Hobby'. The point being that this one thing can expand to fill all of your spare time. Not just playing the game itself but painting miniatures, reading fiction and match reports, admiring the work of talented painters and 'kitbash' remodellers and, of course, lusting after especially ornate miniatures on a scale that tests the limits of that word, knowing you'd need to take out a mortgage to ever buy one. This, it seems, is exactly the role that Unknown Worlds Entertainment wants Moonbreaker to fill, minus some of the associated expense.

This turn-based tactics game seems to be a major departure for the developer of Subnautica. Cast your mind back, though, and you might remember that those games themselves represented a leap from Natural Selection, the shooter-strategy hybrid with which the studio made its name in the first place. The latter half of that game's equation makes it clear that this is an interest of studio founder and CEO Charlie Cleveland, who has been working on this game since development began on Subnautica sequel Below Zero. He's also got tabletop credentials, having moonlighted as co-designer of Vampire: The Masquerade card game Vendetta.