In creepy real-time strategy game Calyx you battle a huge mass of alien plants

Steam are throwing a Real-Time Strategy Fest this week, encompassing discounts and demos, and people who like clicking on Orc-emitting huts are eating well. Of the new strategy game demos I’ve spotted so far, the one that interests me most is Calyx, in which you are at war with a mass of alien vegetation, which expands toward your base in a blossoming, suffocating avalanche of green moss and purple tendril. It seems a bit raw at the level of controls and performance, but the concept is very promising: basically, imagine if Creeper World 4 were a bit more like Ground Control. Here’s a trailer.

The premise: you are the sole surviving crew member aboard an Avaris Corporation deep-space mining vessel. After a century in cryosleep, you’re woken by the shipboard AI and unceremoniously bundled off to the surface of a lifeless planet in search of ore. Then you discover that the planet ain’t so lifeless.

The basic flow here is a mixture of tower-defencey base-building and surgical incursions upon a decentralised, enveloping threat that steadily and insidiously paints the map its colour. You’ll need to set up turrets and a robust power grid to keep them online. But you’ll also need to build tanks, artillery and so forth so that you can clear distant canyons of invasive plants before they become a problem. There are different kinds of plants, which correspond in some ways to the unit types of a traditional RTS, but the thrill of Calyx, I think, is pitting a regular strategy game toolset against a foe that doesn’t play by the same rules.

The demo includes a tutorial level and “an alpha quality, mid-game level to show how the final experience might feel”. Creators Studio 568 were founded by three, pretty seasoned developers with credits at Epic Games, Lionhead and Natural Motion. All three previously worked at The Irregular Corporation, creators of Going Medieval. You can read more on Steam. I hope this turns out to be good.