The world and lore of Moonbreaker, an upcoming digital miniatures strategy game from Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds Entertainment, was largely shaped by the input of Mistborn and Wheel of Time author Brandon Sanderson.
In December 2021, Sanderson confirmed that he's working on a new video game at a studio "many of you will have heard of", and this April he confirmed that it wasn't a Bandai Namco title although he does have a Soulsborns pitch at the ready. With Moonbreaker's reveal, we finally know what he's been working on, and it sounds pretty cool.
"We wanted to make a world that's maybe even cooler than Warhammer," Unknown Worlds co-founder Charlie Cleveland explained at a press event. "It's certainly more modern. We started working with Brandon Sanderson, who wrote Mistborn and Way of Kings and all this stuff. He's a big deal, he's kind of like George R.R. Martin. We've been working with him for years to make a really compelling world. And not just the world, but Captain stories.
"We have this really extensive lore which is gonna be increasingly visible in the game, and we'll be telling Captain stories and filling in the flavor of the world through audio drama," he continues. "You can listen to an audio drama from within the game, and the cool thing is you can actually listen to an audio drama while you're painting. You might spend half an hour or an hour painting a unit, and you can listen to a Captain's story while you're painting that Captain."
"I mean he might as well be a game designer," Cleveland says of Sanderson's works. "If you've read some of his stuff, you know he's known for his magic system design. I've worked really closely with him for two or three years, and he's basically a game designer. We knew we wanted someone that understood games and he seemed like that perfect fit. Even though he's normally fantasy and this is more sci-fi fantasy, more on the Star Wars spectrum, mystical and sci-fi but not hard sci-fi. We thought he could pull that off really well, and I think he really has. So yeah, we approached him and somehow convinced him."
Moonbreaker is set in a system of scattered moons called the Reaches, which is anchored by a scarce and valuable substance called Cinder. This is also the mana-like resource that you use in combat to place and use your crew of space sailors. New details on the Reaches and more ways to explore its foundations will be added in seasonal updates following Moonbreaker's September 29 launch in Steam Early Access.
Moonbreaker is a stunning miniatures strategy game inspired by Hearthstone and Warhammer.
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