"Dawn of War 4": Makers of "Book of Unwritten Tales" develop strategy game
From cuddly point & click adventures to "Warhammer 40k": The next "Dawn of War" is being developed in Bremen by King Art. It's already playing brilliantly.
(Image: King Art Games)
"Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 4" is being created in Germany: King Art Games announced a new spin-off of the renowned strategy series at Gamescom in Cologne. The game will go on sale in 2026. heise online was able to talk to the developers at the games fair and get hands-on experience. The first impression is excellent.
The new installment is no longer being developed by Relic Entertainment, but by King Art Games, a German studio from Bremen. King Art is known for the point & click adventure game "The Book of Unwritten Tales", among others. Most recently, the team launched a solid strategy game on the market in 2020 with Iron Harvest – so King Art is no stranger to the genre. The 'Warhammer' brand could be an opportunity for the Bremen-based studio to expand its international reputation. The "Warhammer" brand inevitably attracts attention.
"Great honor"
"It is a great honor for us to be able to work on such a large and important international IP," says Creative Director Jan Theysen. He sees a second step forward for the German development team after "Iron Harvest".
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Interesting fact: "Warhammer" rights holder Games Workshop took the first step and contacted King Art because it was impressed by the kick-start development of "Iron Harvest". The German government helped with the implementation. The development of "Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 4" was supported with 2.6 million euros in games funding under the code name "Tischplatte".
The biggest "Dawn of War" of all time?
King Art's declared aim is to develop the biggest "Dawn of War" of all time. There are four playable factions: Orks, Adeptus Mechanicus, Necrons and Space Marines, which together total 110 units and buildings. King Art promises four fully-fledged campaigns that can be played alone or in co-op mode.
These campaigns each comprise more than twelve missions, but are not designed to be linear, explains game designer Elliott Verbiest. Players can therefore make decisions that influence the narrative. It is therefore not necessarily possible to see all the missions in one campaign run. There are also skirmish missions and a multiplayer mode – but the Bremen studio wants to focus on the single-player mode. This is what the players of "Iron Harvest" would have appreciated the most. To tell the story with the necessary gravitas, King Art says it has created over 40 minutes of CGI cutscenes.
Action spectacle with powerful images and sound
"Dawn of War 4" makes an outstanding impression on first play. For a strategy game, the title is extremely visually and tonally powerful and plays incredibly well. When armored space marines meet makeshift orc mechs, while bombs explode in the background, it rattles your headphones enough. The battles between the 110 different units and buildings are also of high quality and individually animated: Depending on the units involved, different, perfectly choreographed battle animations are reeled off. All of this is absolutely top class in the strategy genre.
The playable mission, on the other hand, is quite conventional: Buildings are constructed to recruit units that can be used to capture resource generators scattered across the map. In the background, you can do a bit of research and request special skills such as air strikes. The focus is always on the battles. Everywhere on the minimap flashes red, there is always a lot going on. Because the individual units have their own skills and you should even level up their abilities and activate special skills at the right time, "Dawn of War 4" plays very intensively – Micromanagement is required.
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Unique opportunity
"Warhammer 40k" fans have been able to enjoy numerous games in recent years: "Rogue Trader", "Space Marine 2" and "Darktide" are high-quality games that have been released, with more in development. However, the "Dawn of War" series was put on ice for quite a long time. Relic Entertainment's third and most recent installment was released in 2017 – and was not particularly well received by fans.
It's a real opportunity for King Art to get the traditional strategy series back in shape and make a name for itself on the big stage. "We've gradually evolved as a studio to be able to take on a project like this," says game designer Verbiest. "But 'Dawn of War' was still a big step for us compared to 'Iron Harvest'."
A gamble that could pay off: In a market that is acutely lacking in good real-time strategy games, King Art may have a real cracker in the works.
(dahe)
