Trench Tales focuses on trench warfare against monstrous enemies and looks stunningly realistic thanks to modern technology.
Epics Unreal Engine 5 is still so new that hardly any games have been released with it at the moment. Fortnite, the in-house wunderkind, is already using the technology in Battle Royale. And the long list of future third-party titles using the modern code framework is growing by the day, it feels.
This is now joined by a new indie game that doesn”t want to look like a small and unknown developer studio at all: Trench Tales The third-person shooter focuses on single players and is set in the First World War, but also mixes fantasy elements such as monster enemies into the recipe. The whole thing looks frighteningly good.
This is what first gameplay of Trench Tales looks like
The makers of Trench Tales share the development progress via their Twitter account. There are many videos with grey boxes in which they demonstrate certain technical elements of the shooter. For example, how the water in the trenches reacts to gunfire:
So now water is reactive to bullets and explosions and we can call this tech finished. . . gamedev UnrealEngine5 gamedevelopment madewithunreal IndieGameDev indiegamedeveloper pic. twitter.com/TpyvJWj5D
– Trench Tales (@trench_tales) March 14, 2023
Indes there are also already scenes that look like finished trailers. You can watch a comprehensive gameplay video, which also contains the official presentation trailer, on the YouTube channel GameV.
It shows how detailed and well-lit the shooter already looks. The physics and the hit feedback seem brute. Trench Tales creates a lot of atmosphere and gives the impression of a high-quality production over long stretches, even if some things clearly indicate the early state of development:
The Unreal Engine 5 makes it easy for small studios to create respectable material in a short time with few resources of their own. Ready-made building blocks can be bought in the Asset Store and integrated into one”s own game. To what extent the developers of Trench Tales will make use of this is difficult to assess at the moment.
What kind of game will Trench Tales be?
There is not yet much information about what kind of game Trench Tales actually wants to be. A Steam page is supposed to be coming soon, which rules out an Epic Store exclusive release as things stand.
The visuals suggest a single-player shooter (possibly with a co-op option) in a World War II scenario enriched with fantasy elements. As a warrior, you go through the infamous trenches while zombie soldiers hunt you down. There is a lot of shooting and throwing of grenades.
In the video above, the game is also about the First World War, but sets you up as the administrator of a military hospital, which you have to build and manage in a build-up game style.
What do you think of the Trench Tales footage shown? Is this a real challenger in the shooter genre or do you prefer to keep your hopes in check? Let us know what you think in the comments!
