The recent Steam Next Fest included the latest demo from StarCraft II inspired multiplayer RTS Immortal: Gates of Pyre. This demo included several pieces of new content, and notably, the game is now labelled as beta rather than alpha.

I’ve been in love with IGoP from the first trailer I saw, and while there’s still the expected beta hiccups, this demo mostly kept the wins rolling with some quality new additions.

The biggest new feature in this demo is the first new immortal since I started following the game. Atzlan, the Prophet of Roots, brings a new and more defensive spin on the normally aggressive Aru Root Witches faction.

Atzlan is all about doubling down on the Aru’s root way mechanic. Root way is an aura generated by Aru buildings that buffs your units’ shield regeneration. Normally, it extends only a short distance around your base, but Atzlan can summon free root buds that extend the root way across the map. If you’ve played StarCraft II, this will be a very familiar mechanic: It’s creep spread.

While I like the idea of an immortal focused on spreading the root way, the mechanics of how to do so were my one complaint with Atzlan. Constantly adding new root buds feels like the kind of APM sink economic chore that IGoP has otherwise been great at eliminating. Just having it spread automatically would be too strong, so I’m not sure what an ideal solution would be; maybe fewer but more powerful root buds.

Atzlan can also embody root buds to heal nearby units and buff their shields, and that shield buff becomes a permanent feature of that bud, even after he’s moved on to another. His other powers are creating a destructible root wall to block enemy pathing and an ultimate ability that summons a powerful worm to attack enemy ground units.

Atzlan’s first unique unit is the root shepherd, a fast skirmisher. It can temporarily extend the root way’s edges with its presence, though the effect is small enough it feels more like a flavour thing than something to build strategies around. It can also be upgraded to become cloaked while on root way.

His other unique unit is the Resinant, and it was by far my favourite part of playing Atzlan. The Resinant is a beefy anti-ground unit with a powerful long range attack. It can be deployed to gain splash damage and longer range, and even more range if deployed on the root way. In StarCraft II terms, it’s basically an immortal crossed with a siege tank, and every bit as badass as that sounds.

The Resinant can’t attack air, but it will absolutely obliterate anything on the ground foolish enough to come within reach. The main strategy as Atzlan then seems to be to slowly inch across the map, extending your root way and using a battle line of Resinants to crush all who oppose you. It’s a good time.

Another major addition in this build is a new PvE map. This one is a bit different from the previous ones. Rather than a more curated StarCraft II style co-op map, it’s more like an enhanced skirmish map. It takes place on the Canyon 1v1 map we’re all painfully familiar with from past tests, but the objectives, player starting location, enemy immortal, and enemy base locations are all randomized.

So far the main objective has been to kill something in the heart of the enemy base every time but once, and the exception happened when playing at a higher difficulty, so the bucket of objectives may be difficulty based. Each match also ends with a boss fight. It’s not a huge amount of variety, but the randomized layouts and enemy types have been enough to keep it feeling fresh. Lacking the time pressures of the other co-op maps, it feels like a great test bed for learning new immortals and strategies.

I am curious what long term role this map is meant to serve. Is this how the devs are going to do PvE maps going forward — possibly as a cost-cutting measure versus more curated maps? Is it just a test bed for randomization mechanics that will then be used for the other maps? Will the two map types co-exist?

There’s also been a minor polishing pass on PvE maps generally. It’s now clearer what the objective structure on the holdout map does (it buffs your units’ damage), and they’ve added a mechanic where you get some random units at the start of each map. These can be any units from your immortal’s roster, so you can potentially luck out and get some super OP tier 3 units right off the bat.

This is a mechanic I can’t see going live in its current form. Once there’s any kind of rewards or achievements for harder difficulties, people are just going to keep rerolling until they get the starting units they want. In the short term, though, it’s fun, and I do hope they keep the idea of having some units to start, even if they limit the power of what you get. It’s nice to be able to start creeping right away.

The final major feature in the latest demo was the addition of AI for skirmish play. The main goal here would be to offer a way for people to practice their 1v1 or 2v2 play without the pressure of actual multiplayer or the extra mechanics of co-op missions.

It’s a good thing to have, but the AI definitely still needs work. Increasing its difficulty seems to only improve its micro, not its macro, and never once did I see it expand. Doesn’t matter how good the AI’s micro is if you’re on four bases and it’s on one. That’s going to be a stomp no matter what. Skirmish AI is something every RTS seems to struggle with, though, and at least it’s a start.

Considering how long it took Sunspear Games to start adding content beyond the first 1v1 map, it does feel like IGoP‘s development is starting to pick up steam. While the game’s lack of exposure and the looming spectre of previously hinted at blockchain integration continue to cast a pall over its future, it already feels great to play, and every new addition only further proves to me that the developers have an incredible mastery of what makes RTS fun, even if I still have doubts about their business acumen.

The world of online gaming is changing. As the gray area between single-player and MMO becomes ever wider, Massively OP’s Tyler Edwards delves into this new and expanding frontier biweekly in Not So Massively, our column on battle royales, OARPGs, looter-shooters, and other multiplayer online titles that aren’t quite MMORPGs.