Watch the first gameplay footage from Age of Wonders: Planetfall

Joe got a good look at Triumph Studios' upcoming sci-fi 4X strategy game Age of Wonders: Planetfall in May, and came away impressed. Now, you can make your own mind up by watching 90 minutes of gameplay footage that the developer released this week.

In the video, game director Lennart Sas starts by picking a commander, faction and secret technology (essentially a "doomsday weapon") before trying to build up a colony on a mountainous planet.

You'll get a look at scouting, diplomacy and the extensive research trees in the video. Sas meets The Growth, a sentient plant species, the zombie soldiers of the Imperial Revenant and the Kir'Ko, an alien insect race that specialise in melee combat.

The Kir'Ko are the target of Sas' ire, and he takes them on in Planetfall's turn-based combat, which starts at the 11:20 mark. Joe talked about how it'll be compared to XCOM, and you can see why: you can put units in Overwatch to lock down an area of the map and crouch behind destructible cover of varying strengths. But its giant hex tiles and relatively small battle arenas mean that fights unfold far quicker than XCOM because there are limited options for where you can move.

I like what Triumph has done with hit percentages. If you have more than 75% chance to hit an enemy with an attack, then you'll always do damage, but there's a chance you'll "graze" them for half damage. It'll remove the frustration of missing a 95% sure shot. Sas says that "stagger" is going to be a key mechanic, too—if you make an enemy stagger by dealing certain types of damage, they'll be forced out of Overwatch, which could prove very useful.

It's a lot to get your head around, but, on first look, the move away from a fantasy setting seems to suit the series. What do you think?

Planetfall is due in 2019.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.