Steel Storm: A.M.M.O, is a new MOBA being published by Kot in Action Creative Artel, the publisher of Steel storm and developed by Zeolite Studios Inc, a studio made up of previous Kot in Action Creative Artel employees. Having only been released in its alpha stage at the end of September Storm A.M.M.O shows great promise.
Still in alpha the current build of Steel Storm A.M.M.O has a lot of promise, while the current alpha build is designed as a weapon balancing test, it still does a great job of showing off the games main features. As with most resent MOBA’s you start the game at your base and have to work your way down the three ‘lanes’ towards the enemy base while destroying minions and player’s alike. Due to the weapon test build you have the ability to use every weapon in the game from the start; this leads to some rather interesting fight with other players, but does a great job of showing the diverse range of weapons available and the fun but crazy of 5 on 5 fights that can occur.
Steel Storm A.M.M.O currently lets you pick in game from one of 3 ship types, light, medial and heavy, for those that have played Steel storm before the ship types correspond to an alien enemy (light), the player (medium) and a Heavy Proton Tank (heavy). Each class has its own different health and speed allowing for people to play however they want. Later plans look for individual players’ tanks to be customised their tanks states even more and for and increases in vehicles available. For now the only character customisation can be done to the colour of your ships, unfortunately when entering a game and selecting a team that teams colour is filtered over your own leading to your ship looking a bit different.
Mentioned several times in interviews and the game description the developers have been inspired by anime style of drawing, incorporating this in to the game design. The current design uses a mix of cell-shaded visuals and viewing angles in order to give Steel Storm a new style to the maps. While many of the modal assets look to have been ported straight from previous games, it is expected that they will also be updated with this style.
The game does offer a lot in the lately expanding market of MOBA’s for a more shooting and fasts passed game that won’t take half an hour a game. The game also offers quite a balanced map where every player has the same choice of vehicles and there are no set roles, this lets players work with only their own skill when combating others.
Unfortunately as expected with an alpha there are a few problems, with the current build. Some weapons are massively overpowered, such as the advanced beam weapon and the MIRV mortar both of which completely out class all other weapons. This leads to most other weapons not being used at all and there being no ability to retreat, in search of power ups and health.
Another issue is with the in game mini map, due to the colour differences and markers it can be quite difficult to see the where the ‘lanes’ are and where different land marks are. This tired in with the fact that you only see a small area of the map at once on the mini map can make navigating the map and finding enemy’s quite hard. This does however lead to some exiting game play when you stumble upon an enemy.
Plans for the future of the game include 16 player maps, with up to 8 players on a team, anime inspired avatars that are displaying in game and even take damage as your tank does and give different bonuses allowing for even more custom gameplay. In game crafting that allow for you to build items, from different components that are picked up around the battlefield increasing your tanks ability’s. A planned tournament style leader boards and achievements are in development allowing for progressing and competitive play. This addition and more I am sure that will come throughout the development process, will help to smooth out the rough areas of the game and really allow Steel Storm A.M.M.O to reach its potential and fill in its place in the current MOBA market.
Developers during a twitch interview have mentioned that they hope to have the main core of the game completed in about a years’ time, with additional content and support to be offered afterwards. Currently only available on Steam early access, the developers plan to release the game in several areas. I for one can’t wait for more content to be released for this game and hope that the game finds the support in need to become the great game it could be.
Grab yourself early access to the game here http://store.steampowered.com/app/251790/
