Sword of the Stars gets another spin-off in the form of card-based wargame Ground Pounders

Virtual card games. Everyone's at it these days, including [UPDATE: sort of] Sword of the Stars developers Kerberos. Not content with the 4X strategy game's first spin-off (roguelike The Pit ), the team are making a 'wargame with cards' and they've decided to call it Ground Pounders. Although it hasn't officially been announced yet - expect that sometime this week - it does have a trailer and a tantalisingly empty website , so I'm fairly confident that it's a thing.

As the following video reveals, you'll be able to "control your army", "control your cards" and "control the planet", which to be honest sounds like a lot of responsibility. There's not much to go on yet, but producer Chris Stewart has told me via email to "think sci-fi Panzer General with cards you can use to alter your combat rounds etc", so that's exactly what I'm doing. Hey, it looks pretty good in my head.

Ground Pounders is coming soon, according to that trailer, and we can expect more info (and a demo) very soon. Until then, here's a trio of alpha screenshots. I have no idea what's going on, but it looks pretty damned hexy.

(Cheers, Blues News )

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.