Revisioning of our mech franchise, Introducing M.A.V.

Revisioning of our mech franchise, Introducing M.A.V.

First a little history behind our Mech franchise.....

In 2004, Max Gaming released its first game using Torque (Dark Horizons: Lore), followed by a singleplayer addon (Lore: Invasion in late 2004) It was received very well and over its 3 year course had hundreds of thousands of registered users and matches. The game was a IGF finalist in 2005, and spawned its own con (LoreCon) in the same year.

What made DH: Lore special? First and foremost the fans made this game special, but why did the fans love the game? Over and over I have been told by the fans of the game that the design of our persistent game world gave purpose to playing the game, allowed players to build up rivalries, friendships, and let the game live well past 2007 when we stopped official support.

The other area that our fans loved was our engagement to the community, basically we listened, we cared and it made for not only a better game but gave the players a feeling that they were being listened to which gave them a sense of ownership.

In 2008/2009 we were itching to put a new version of the game back out into the public and we signed a deal with InstantAction to bring Lore: Aftermath to their new gaming portal. For us Aftermath never felt finished, at its core the gameplay and tech were up to snuff, but the sense of being a game that captured the attention of the players were not there.

So fast forward to today, 9/4/2012, and after a failed kickstarter last year and many many meetings internal on what to do with the game if anything, we have arrived at how we want to move foward.

Looking back at the releases of our Dark Horizons mech games we have come to a few conclusions:

- Community is most important, so lets include those features that foster the community.
- Graphics are important, but gameplay is supreme (a lot of good looking games fail to deliver a good gameplay)
- Fix some of the communication on what our game is from the start.

Introducing M.A.V. - Mechanized Assault Vehicle

With all our retrospection of our Dark Horizons IP and the related games, we have been working with the Aftermath codebase to produce our 3rd game in the series M.A.V. - Mechanized Assault Vehicle.

Why the name change?

Looking back at our previous titles we felt that names like Lore: Invasion, Lore: Aftermath did not really tell the player what the game is about and what it is they will be doing. The current name really felt good to us in the fact that it is what our mechs are called (MAVs).

So what's in the new game?

So with this 3rd game in the series we wanted to take the best of both games to bring our vision of a persistent mech game to life. This includes the following features:
Faction Wars - a persistent battle for supremacy in the game world. Faction Wars battles count toward taking over territory and provide bonuses to each faction and its units.
Comcent - Ties together the player and the persistent Faction Wars system. Allows players to visibly see what is going on in the game world via a battle map, allows players to join factions and create/join units. It will allow for player created missions and track your pilot's progress in the gameworld.
Fast paced Mech simulation derived directly from the Lore: Aftermath product.
Single player instant action and tutorial campaign. Players will be able to drop into MP missions to practice via our Instant Action option, along with being introduced to the game and new story via a short introductory campaign.

Will you upgrade the graphics in the new game?

The short-term answer is no, the game is currently being built with the last engine release of Aftermath. This is allowing us to focus on gameplay and building out community features.

The long-term answer is yes, we will be slowly porting in newer features of the Torque game engine, to provide the highest quality graphical experience to our players as possible.

So when will the game be available?

We currently have a build using the Aftermath engine in closed testing, and are accepting new applications currently. This is purely a gameplay test and does not include the Faction Wars/Comcent features. Once we feel the build is rock solid we will open up the testing to the public while we continue to build out features and take in feedback.

We are currently working alot on the game and we will be posting a roadmap on releases and what it will take to get to each soon. We are looking at possible crowd funding to reach certain milestones.

How do I get involved?

We are currently looking for interested players to join our closed testing, if you are interested please click on the following link:

Closed Beta Program

For more information on the game please goto http://www.playmech.com and look for more information to be announced soon.

About Max Gaming Technologies, LLC

Formed in 1998 by founder Adrian Wright, Max Gaming is a Independent developer of PC, Mobile and console games. In 2004 Max Gaming released its first digital title Dark Horizons: Lore which received critical acclaim and was a finalist in the 2005 IGF competition.