Relic Entertainment has announced Earth vs. Mars, a new turn-based strategy game that looks like a mash-up of Advance Wars, Mars Attacks, and irresponsible genetic manipulation. Currently scheduled to be released on PC in Summer 2025, the game pits humans against Martians in a battle for supremacy over our corner of the cosmos.
Like Nintendo’s Advance Wars games, you’ll get to pick from several commanders to lead Earth’s military forces, with each battlefield leader having unique abilities that you can make tactical use of.
Gallery
While you’ll have access to military hardware like tanks and artillery, the real secret weapon here is the Splice-O-Tron that can be used to transform “volunteers” into powerful super-soldiers when you add some animal DNA to the mix. Some of the interesting combinations teased include the fast-moving cheetah-fly, powerhouse human-rhino hybrids, and the deadly squirrel-cow infantry.
Relic says the game will feature over 30 missions in the single-player campaign, a versus mode against AI, and online multiplayer. On top of all that, there’ll also be a map editor that you can use to create custom levels and scenarios. Earth vs. Mars is the first game from the new Relic Labs initiative–a program that will let the studio explore new sub-genres and experiment with several ideas between its big real-time strategy game releases.
The Company of Heroes developer became independent of Sega last year, a move which resulted in several layoffs. As part of its new business strategy, Relic will also continue to focus on supporting its recently released games and it plans to revisit older franchises through remasters and re-releases.