Etherium trailer heralds January release for the sci-fi RTS

Real-time strategy games continue their slow climb out of the big Pit o' Dead Genres with the upcoming Etherium, which is all set to turtle its way onto Steam in a month or so. You'll find more details here and here, but Etherium appears to mix its RTS battles with 4X-style turn-based outer-space tactics, and that sounds like a very pleasant combination indeed. A new trailer, below, shows off a load of in-game footage.

Etherium's Big Thing (aside from the lightly 4Xy space stuff) is its 'dynamic' weather system, which will see you battling (or taking advantage of) the elements as you aim to plunder all the Etherium you can get your hands on. You'll play as a race of humans, aliens or robots in the game, each of which wants the precious resource for a different reason—for instance, the aliens are going to use it to make some of their famous Etherium eccles cakes. Probably.

There's no specific release date I can spy, but the Steam pre-order promotion ends on the 20th of January, so that seems like the most likely candidate.

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.