Homeworld 3's War Games Mode Has Me Finally Excited For Roguelikes

25.08.2023 - 15:55 / mmorpg.com

Set amongst the unnumberable stars, my Interceptors bore down onto my enemy's recon ships. My strikecraft, equipped with a damage-boosting mod, made short work of the enemy craft, lasers tearing through the vacuum of space, finding their homes nestled into the now shattered hulls of my enemy.

However, at that moment, a new threat emerged — an enemy capital ship warped in on top of my fleet and that of my allies, aiming to wreak havoc. The moment-to-moment action in Homeworld 3's upcoming multiplayer War Games mode kept me on my toes the whole time during a press preview last week, and it's shaping up to be some great fun when Homeworld 3 launches next February.

The new War Games mode brings a repeatable, co-op mode to the upcoming space-faring RTS. Inspired by Rougelikes, Homeworld 3's new multiplayer mode pits players (up to three total each run) against waves of enemies in contained arenas, complete with randomized challenges to overcome. It sounds rather straightforward, and in practice, it is to a degree. 

Players are dropped into a pocket of space, complete with space debris to make the dungeon more visually and tactically interesting, and are tasked with building a fleet, gathering resources, and then completing the randomized objectives thrown at them.

What kind of fleet to use is decided before the War Game is launched. Players can specialize in a recon fleet for example, which gives you more scout craft to begin with, and as you progress by completing runs, you unlock more varied fleets. This initial fleet choice helps to define how each player in thr group is going to contribute to the overall goal, such as the Support Fleet specializing in helping repair ships and keep them in the fight. 

Completing (or even failing, as was the case in one my runs) sees the group hit hyperspace to the next area, reaching the end of the run after a few jumps. The challenges themselves, and the difficulty, ramped up throughout each run, and the actual challenges themselves were rather varied, throwing many different scenarios to flex our Homeworld 3 strategy muscles.

Homeworld 3's excellent strategy gameplay is the focal point of the mode. As someone who played the original Homeworld titles growing up extensively, it felt a bit like coming home here. After a brief tutorial to remind myself the controls of moving ships in full three-dimensional space, myself, another game journalist and a Gearbox rep jumped into our first run.

Homeworld 3's War Games fosters teamwork from the first moments. Immediately my team started to plan how we would specialize to bring our fleets to bear in a balanced way, one specializing in support ships, another in Ion Cannon Frigates and Assault Frigates. Myself, I started to lean into