Meridian: New World announced, a sci-fi RTS from one-man dev team Elder Games

Meridian: New World is a rather lovely (at least in pictures) real-time strategy game made by one man, Ede Tarsoly, who has spent the last two years of his life on the project. It's long overdue a formal announcement, then - and as luck would have it the town crier himself yelled in my ear this morning about its "focus on storytelling" and "level editor" and "Q2 2014", and I didn't stop to question him about his use of financial lingo because Meridian sounds like quite the achievement. Read several more words about it below.

The New World in question is the titular planet of Meridian, which is about to explored by one Daniel Hanson (this is you), and by explored I mean 'shot at with guns'. Interestingly, Elder Games (Tarsoly's development company) promises you'll be able to "shape the world around you with every decision you make and through every dialogue with your crew", with the attitude/behaviour of your crew having an effect on the business of building bases and clicking on baddies until they go away. I'm intrigued to know more about this social aspect, but for now here's a feature list:

Traditional RTS gameplay with a focus on strategy - the forceful approach rarely works
Experience a world of choices where every decision has an impact on the world around you
Use the right tool to get the job done: equip your units with 15 different weapons
Gain XP during battle and upgrade your commander profile with special combat abilities
Get to know the people on board your ship: by talking to them, you influence the crew's behavior
Including a full level editor and scripting tool used to build the campaign maps will be available
Never run out of maps with the in-game custom map downloader and official levels released frequently after release

There's no footage yet, but there are a bunch of rather lovely and stupidly watermarked screenshots below. Remember: this is the work of one guy. Meridian should be out sometime in Spring/Summer next year.

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.