Former Homeworld devs' Hardware: Shipbreakers gets a stunning debut trailer

The debut trailer for Hardware: Shipbreakers , the sci-fi strategy game made by some of the people behind the Homeworld series, shows what can be achieved with just concept art, music and magnificently gruff narration. There's nary a hint of 'gameplay' in this video - which tells the story of a shipbreaker's desire to return home from a mysterious 'graveyard planet' - but it's comfortably the best trailer I've seen all year, evoking the similarly beautiful cutscenes from the Homeworld games. Have a gander below.

We don't know much about Hardware: Shipbreakers, other than that it's a "persistent multiplayer" "social strategy game" from Blackbird Interactive, a company made up of former Relic staff, including Homeworld's art director Rob Cunningham and lead artist Aaron Kambeitz. The description on the Facebook beta signup page reveals a little more: "HARDWARE (HW) is a next-generation online social game based on the concept of salvaging resources on a distant, barren planet named LM-27." Next-generation eh? So presumably it's going to be on PS4 or the mythical next Xbox as well.

Hardware: Shipbreakers is due out sometime this year, and after watching the following video, you'll wish that "sometime" meant "sometime next week". (Thanks to Kotaku .)

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.