Hi, everyone.
First off, some exciting news. Stormgate: Campaign One - Ashes of Earth, will be released on Steam on August 5. We’d also like to take some time to provide a little more context around this major milestone.
We shared our long-term vision for Stormgate at the inception of our company. Our four pillars have always been campaign, co-op, competitive, and custom games, and those features remain integral to our plans.
We’d like to share an introspective look at our overall progress as we work towards our ambitious vision for the game, while also celebrating this major milestone: our exit from Early Access.
We’ve been carefully reading and listening to feedback from our passionate community. Players have told us that calling our exit from Early Access “0.6” may have been well-meant, but it didn’t properly convey that Stormgate’s foundational content is complete and ready for players to enjoy. They said it was confusing, and we respect that feedback, so we are making some clarifications here.
Stormgate: Campaign One - Ashes of Earth is the official launch out of Early Access. It will include the complete Ashes of Earth campaign and a robust 1v1 mode, as well as access to the Terrain Editor Alpha and Co-op mode that are still in active development based on community feedback.
Our goal with this FAQ is to answer questions we’re seeing from our community, particularly around what this update means for the game’s status, scope, and features. Here’s a closer look at what you can expect:
When is the Stormgate campaign launch?
Stormgate: Campaign One - Ashes of Earth will launch on Steam August 5!
What’s going on with your patch numbers? What are you calling your launch release?
We’re going to drop the numbered system and instead stick with our release codenames inspired by RTS units, which we still use internally to this day. We think they’re fun, and we want to continue sharing these with our community—some are obscure and we enjoy the community discussion they spark.
Stormgate: Campaign One - Ashes of Earth will launch as our Necrolyte release, with future releases also referred to by their RTS-inspired internal codenames.
This approach will allow us to properly recognize each release for what it is: not an incremental addition to a progress bar with an arbitrary “1.0” at the end, but a meaningful addition to what has come before, with new features, modes, content, and improvements for players to enjoy. Each release will steadily move us towards our vision for Stormgate as a frequently updated and supported RTS that, with your help, will grow and evolve for years to come.
We believe this approach is a better fit for live development—Stormgate is tremendously ambitious in scope, with many features to flesh out and improve, even after our foundational modes are ready for launch.
For those keeping track, these have been our previous version names:
Apocalypse (our original alpha build!)
Baneling
Chronosphere
Devastator
Elephant
Frigate
Griffin (our Early Access launch)
Hunter
Ironclad
Jager
Krogoth
Lynx
Mammoth (our current release)
Necrolyte (our upcoming official Steam release)
And coming up next (all subject to change, of course):
Ornithopter will be our Fall release, when we aim to introduce Team Mayhem to Sigma Labs
Peon would be next on deck, followed by Queen
We have a lot more planned after that as well. Players who want to know more about our development priorities and future plans can look forward to our next roadmap, which we aim to release ahead of our upcoming launch.
What about smaller patches like 0.4.1? How will you handle those?
We name these smaller patches as well! “Hunter” was followed up by “hunter2”, a reference to a classic internet meme. “Griffin” was followed by “Griffinish-line”, to reflect the hotfixes we needed to make for our Early Access release. Spoiler alert–we are already working on updates that will land after “Necrolyte”, and they’re going to be Necro-lit. 🔥
Why are you leaving Early Access without all the game modes you’ve been working on?
After a year of progress with the help of our community's feedback, we believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience. We will obviously continue to incorporate feedback on these modes moving forward, but we feel that these modes are at a point where players at large can enjoy them.
Other modes, like Co-op Missions and the editor, will be available in a developmental state through our in-game “test kitchen” which we’re calling Sigma Labs. Those modes will continue to expand over time, in the same way that past RTS games launched and grew from there.
Even in a preview state, we believe that the content in Sigma Labs is a lot of fun. Here are some screenshots from player-created maps that have been made using our editor.
We hope that players will understand our choice to prioritize the fundamentals first, and to release with our campaign and 1v1 modes while we continue to fill out the rest of our long-term vision. Quality over quantity was our single biggest learning from Early Access. As an independent studio, we have limited resources, and exiting Early Access is a critical step towards sustaining our ongoing development. We remain very committed to achieving our full vision, and we want to be forthright that our Steam launch is a debut rather than the end of a journey.
Why not wait until everything is ready?
We have a grand vision for Stormgate that we hope to continue to evolve for years to come. Many prior RTS game launches, including some recent releases, focused on traditional campaign and competitive modes for their launch. We feel like this is a good approach that honors our community’s guidance for us to focus on quality instead of trying to do everything at once.
We are a smaller studio with more limited funding than the big publishers and we must align our focus to match that reality. We’ve worked really hard to build a strong foundation with SnowPlay, and our current priority has been to prepare our campaign and 1v1 experiences for a broader audience.
How many campaign missions are included at launch?
Stormgate’s first campaign, Ashes of Earth, will launch with 12 missions. It’s a complete story, but we have plans to expand upon it in the future with some additional free missions as part of our ongoing effort to expand Stormgate’s universe and lore.
From there, our plan is to release more campaigns for as long as players are enjoying them.
Are all the units in the game finished?
Yes—for now! We believe our core factions have reached a fun and competitive state, but Stormgate is a living game. RTS balance is never perfect. It’s safe to expect that what we have on launch day will continue to evolve over time.
Balance adjustments, new unit ideas, and faction updates will continue based on player feedback and internal goals, including our planned future introduction of new Tier 3 units. We’re also actively working on our Celestials revamp, which will be rolled out in stages, as will the introduction of more units and other changes that we feel will improve the game.
Does this mean the game is no longer in Early Access?
Correct. Stormgate: Campaign One - Ashes of Earth, codenamed Necrolyte, marks the end of Early Access. But we’re a live game and there is much more to come —including Co-op Missions, our 3v3 Team Mayhem mode, and the editor—and we consider ourselves to still be at an earlier stage of development. We’ll be sharing a roadmap to give you a vision of what’s to come as we get closer to our launch.
What is the status of co-op and the editor?
Co-op Missions and the Terrain Editor Alpha will both be available in Sigma Labs for players who want to explore what we’re working on next. Everything in Sigma Labs is clearly marked in-game as “a work in progress” and these modes will continue to grow and evolve in future updates.
When can we play Team Mayhem?
Our highly-anticipated 3v3 mode featuring Heroes will be introduced in an upcoming update, which Tim Morten recently confirmed is slated for this Fall.
When will all the game modes be finished?
It’s impossible to say, but for the modes we’ve previewed, we're aiming for 2026. A lot can happen between now and then, and the commercial success of our upcoming Steam release will be a major factor. Our goal is to have Team Mayhem, Co-op missions, and the editor in a ready state by the first half of next year. As a live game, we hope to continue adding even more modes in the future!
Will my campaign progress carry over into Necrolyte?
Yes. Any progress you’ve made during Early Access will carry forward into Necrolyte, though players will need to reallocate the reward points they earned in previous versions of the campaign.
Can I pause or save campaign missions?
Pause functionality is available, and you can save/load at checkpoints, but full save/load support is coming in a future update.
Did you ever add customizable hotkeys?
Yes. Those were introduced way back in 0.3, or “Krogoth”, and we’ll continue iterating based on player feedback.
What else is changing for your upcoming launch?
We’ve made a wide range of improvements since our last update, including visual upgrades, balance changes, new gameplay features, and more bug fixes than we can count—much of which was based on community feedback.
If you’re like us and you love this style of real-time strategy game, we hope that you’ll join us for our biggest milestone yet when Stormgate Campaign One: Ashes of Earth launches on Steam. We’re tremendously excited about this major milestone, and about continuing our development journey with RTS players around the world.
Good luck and have fun,
-Tim Morten, Tim Campbell, and the rest of the Frost Giant team