This may not be the ideal moment to announce this kind of a strategy game (with the genre's fans still drooling over the StarCraft II trailers and everything), but if the Bulgarians from Black Sea Studios saw fit to reveal their latest project today, then so be it. It's called WorldShift, and the way they put it, it will be a "next-generation, cyber-fantasy RTS game set in a dark future of Earth, where todays' civilization is only a fading mysterious legend".

Regardless of whether or not you know Knights of Honor - their previous (and so far only) game, WorldShift will be a completely different take on the genre. At least for them. Along with some distinct gameplay features detailed on the official website (e.g. modifiable factions, unqiue cooperative multiplayer gameplay, powerful relics, no technology trees), WorldShift will include three playable races: Humans - who now live in five independent Megacities scattered all around the plagued Earth; the Tribes - who are living humbly, populating the vast wastelands all over the planet; and The Hive - who are still a bit of a mystery, but we have reasons to suspect they are not quite what you would call "peaceful".

The first WorldShift screenshots look good enough already, and they say they've been working on it for a long time already. Still, there's no release date in sight, and no publishing deal announced so far. So we'll sure be hearing more about this game from now on; and so will you.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)