Overcome by the vapours: Nival announces Etherlords, an F2P take on the classic strategy series (UPDATED)

Conquering fantasy realms and preserving netted butterflies.

Nival Interactive have revealed to us that their next game will be the mobile debut of the long-running Etherlords series. Simply titled Etherlords, it’s going to be a PvP-focused with 60-second battles and collectible creatures. It’s also going to feature a world-building mechanic that they told us was inspired by Carcassonne, which is not a bad sheet of music to crib from.

Russian devs Nival have long been the most loyal bannermen of turn-based strategy on PC. Even when big publishers clung to the notion that strategy games “weren’t contemporary“, Nival were unabashedly cranking out the turniest of turn-based games. Stuff like Silent Storm and King’s Bounty — the latter series having so many installments that I’m starting to worry that it’s a Von Neumann machine.

But on mobile, Nival have been bitten hard by the free-to-play bug. Their mobile flagship from earlier this year, Prime World Defenders, was stuffed with in-app purchases like Supercell‘s Thanksgiving turkey. No doubt that Etherlords will suffer from a similar affliction, but Nival themselves seem to feel a bit sheepish about this. Their press materials for Etherlords promise that the game won’t have any energy-limiting mechanics that stop you from playing if you don’t cough up the cash — which just makes you wonder where else the monetisation will be hiding.

I love Nival powerfully — they made me a fan for life with sci-fi/WWII tactical candybox Silent Storm — and I wish they’d just make a proper mobile game. We’ll do our best to give Etherlords a fair shot when it drops for iOS on September 4th.

Trailer below.

UPDATE: Nival got in touch with one correction and a bit of reassurance.

First, they want to clarify that this Etherlords game isn’t being considered a part of the the PC franchise, but rather a game inspired by it.

Second, they wanted to assuage fears about the free-to-play aspect. I’ll let them speak for themselves here.

“In Etherlords [monetization] will be really soft. It’s context-based offers, for example, it won’t be stuffed with in-apps.”

There you have it. Though while I’ve got your attention, Nival — how about Silent Storm for iPad? No IAPs, charge $10. I betcha we’ve got a few thousand people hanging around this site alone that would buy it.