Relic’s new project is a ‘smaller indie-style’ game about a martian invasion of Earth

Earth vs Mars is a new RTS in development at Relic, but unlike the studio’s big Company of Heroes and Dawn of War games, this one is a “smaller indie-style” game being made under its Relic Labs label, which aims to “explore new sub-genres, experiment, get our creative juices going, and release games more frequently.”

The new game is a campy take on a familiar scenario: The Martians, having had enough of our nonsense, invade Earth with an overwhelming force of flying saucers, hover-tanks, and other such staples of classic sci-fi. Humanity’s only hope is the “Splice-O-Tron,” a technology that enables humanity’s leaders to combine “volunteers” with terrestrial animals to create supersoldiers that will fight alongside conventional military forces. But it may not be just human-animal hybrids on the table: The Steam page cites intriguing units like the airborne “cheetah-fly” and the “deadly squirrel-cow infantry.” I’m not really an RTS guy, but I definitely want to know more about that.

But Mars, not being slouches in the technology department, will deploy their own weirdo mutants as the campaign progresses, evolving their own army alongside yours. Earth vs Mars will feature a singleplayer campaign with more than 30 missions, along with online multiplayer, a versus mode, and a map editor enabling players to create their own custom maps and scenarios.

The Earth vs Mars reveal comes just a week after Relic announced a new “bold course for the future,” built on three key pillars: Continued support and updates for its existing games; “re-imaging” its older games in the form of re-releases, remasters, or “brand-new franchise experiences that capture the spirit of the originals while appealing to a new generation of players”; and “smaller scope” games with an indie bent, which Relic said “will allow the studio to explore new genres and gameplay experiences and continue fostering a culture of experimentation and artistic expression.”

That announcement came in the wake of a rough couple of years for Relic, which has laid off more than 150 employees since mid-2023 and in March 2024 was sold by previous owner Sega. Relic said in May of that year that it was “returning to its roots as an independent creative studio,” but it also confirmed that its new majority owner was investment firm Emona Capital LLC, which struck me as a bit counter-intuitive to the concept of independence.

In any event, Earth vs Mars is clearly Relic’s first big step forward as it looks to regain its footing, and while it’s still an RTS—the genre the studio is known for—it does look to be a simpler, more scaled-back experience than Relic’s previous games. A release date hasn’t been announced but Earth vs Mars is expected to be out this summer, and it will only be available for PC at launch: Relic said it may come to other platforms in the future, “based on the game’s reception.”