Tempest Rising is an upcoming RTS game currently under development at Splitgate Ironworks, with the publishing rights falling under 3D Realms and Knights Peak. What is so special about Tempest Rising is that it is nearly the true spiritual successor of the 90s RTS titles, as we have seen from its recent demos and playtests. After jumping into their most recent bet, which gave access to story missions as well as Skirmish levels, we wanted to learn in an interview about how Splitgate Ironworks managed to bring back the nostalgia for us 90s RTS game lovers with Tempest Rising. Answering our questions here is Brandon Casteel, Lead Game Designer at Splitgate Ironworks. So, without any further delay, let’s jump into the questions.
GamesHedge: Tell us about Slipgate Ironworks. What have you guys cooked up so far and what sort of genres has the development team already tackled?
Brandon Casteel: Slipgate Ironworks is a studio dedicated to bringing the classic gaming experience of the early 90s and 2000s to the modern age. We have worked on games like Ghostrunner, Ion Fury, Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, and now Tempest Rising. We have worked on games in genres like FPS, twin stick shooters, sidescrollers, and more. I think it’s fair to say that Tempest Rising is a bit of a departure for the studio, but we are very proud of what we’re putting together.
GamesHedge: RTS is one of the hardest genres to tackle in today’s gaming industry as it is evident from many recent releases. Not many releases have seen success. What made the development team choose this genre as their new project?
Brandon Casteel: Absolutely. It is hard to make an RTS. We’re doing this, not to put too fine a point on it, out of love. Fred Schreiber, the studio CEO, is a big fan of the C&C series, and he’s always wanted to create something that jives with his love for classic 90s RTS. And I’m a child of the nineties myself, and a big RTS-head. It’s far and away my favorite genre, and I’ve made an academic study of it for over a decade now in my blog, Wayward Strategy (https://waywardstrategy.com). Fred had been looking for an opportunity to make a game like this for a long time, and in mid-to-late 2019, fate kind of brought us together. But yeah, we are literally fortunate enough to be making exactly the game we ourselves want to play. We’re still a couple of months out from launch as I’m writing this, and it is, I believe, my most played Steam game already, and I expect this trajectory to continue. I’m playing this because I love it, and not just to test things or for work. This is really the game I want to be playing, and I can’t believe my good fortune that I get to be a part of bringing something like this to life.
GamesHedge: We already know that Tempest Rising takes its inspiration from classic RTS titles but let’s hear it from the developers. Which title was the main inspiration behind Tempest Rising and what was the development philosophy behind the game from the start?
Brandon Casteel: I think I know what you want me to say, and I think it’s obvious that we draw a lot of inspiration from the Command & Conquer series, but astute RTS players have noticed that we draw a lot of inspiration from across the genre in more subtle ways. When I set out to design and refine the systems in Tempest Rising, I did so to intentionally make it its own experience. With Tempest Rising, we want to give players an experience that is unique to our game: to me, it doesn’t make sense to repeat the experience of another game. Those games already exist, and if people want to play them, they can! So, with the systems and the factions in Tempest Rising, we really wanted them to feel familiar but to give you an experience that you don’t get in other games. But there are lots of little thematic, mechanical, and design elements that players might recognize and wonder if that system came from another game they played. It might have, or it might just be a coincidence… Like a magician, I feel that it’s better to leave some of those things to the imagination: they lose some of their charm if it’s spelled out too plainly.
GamesHedge: Does the gameplay of Tempest Rising require a diverse selection of units to win, or is it possible to just spam a large number of tanks and roll them over your enemies for the win?
Brandon Casteel: Synergies are very important in Tempest Rising, and the GDF are a great example of this: Their Hunter Tank deals bonus damage when attacking targets Marked by the Sentinel Scout Car. Add a Comms Rig into the mix, and it gains bonus attack speed, and the Trebuchet builds on this by reducing the attack and move speed of enemy units, and the Scrambler can Silence them, removing most of their active (and passive) abilities. Force composition and knowing the capabilities of your army are very important to the game, and a well-used army can definitely beat a larger force handily: many of my fights against players in our closed beta and demo ended with my opponent having a larger economy, but I won by taking better fights.
GamesHedge: Will all three factions have a unique campaign in the game, or does Veti serve as a complimentary faction and only appear as an enemy during GDF and Tempest Dynasty’s campaigns?
Brandon Casteel: The GDF and Dynasty have unique campaigns. The Veti appear as an enemy in these campaigns.
GamesHedge: The recent demo we played featured 2 GDF campaign missions and 2 Tempest Dynasty missions. While we loved the variety of these missions, what sort of full-length campaigns will each faction have? Will they have an equal number of missions, or are they different from each other?
Brandon Casteel: Each campaign is 11 missions long. They follow the same general story from different perspectives: something you do in one campaign might be something that you hear about happening in the other as a for instance. Our missions are designed to be pretty beefy: generally, a lot happens, and you’ll have plenty of gameplay time per mission. We do try to ensure that our missions are varied and not all based on the same format.
GamesHedge: Will there be commando-only missions in Tempest Rising? These missions are a staple in the classic CnC titles, and we are sure that players would love to see them return to modern RTS titles like Tempest Rising.
Brandon Casteel: Yes! These are some of our favorite missions in Tempest Rising.
GamesHedge: Was there any specific reason to skip Super Weapons (like Nuclear Missile, ION Cannon, Weather Control Machine for reference) for each faction, or did they just not fit into the whole universe of Tempest Rising?
Brandon Casteel: In Tempest Rising, each faction has five support powers. In the campaign, these are globally unlocked at the player level, but in multiplayer, each one is tied to a specific structure that has to be present and powered for the support power to work. This is functionally very similar to how a super weapon might work in another game. You have a supporting structure that provides access to a global ability based on that structure’s existence on the map and control by you. In my opinion, for all intents and purposes, Tempest Rising does have superweapons, we just go about implementing them into the game in ways that support their best use: you have to pay for each activation of a support power, for instance, which means there’s an economic opportunity cost for using it. I’m actually a bit surprised that some people have made so much hay over the distinction.
GamesHedge: Tempest Rising also goes for a multiple-commando approach for each faction. What was the main reason behind multiple specialist infantry units for each faction?
Brandon Casteel: I really enjoy using Commandos in the Command & Conquer games and in other RTS that give you story-specific special units, like heroes or unique characters in their campaign. But the strict limit and strict utility of these units, not to mention that if you can train them, they’re often way down in the tech tree, means they’re not often seen or used outside of a very few specific scenarios. In this case, I was really just trying to give players more of what I love in this sort of game. Giving players five different choices and a lot of combinations of these, especially in multiplayer, allows for very interesting strategies with some powerful, high-impact units that also have understandable and unique downsides. For a player to be able to train as many as they wanted in some of these units, it would either have to be watered down to the point where it wasn’t interesting or would just be completely overpowered and then would simply dominate the game.
GamesHedge: How important are Air Units in Tempest Rising? Do you think that they will be important in battles, or can players just skip them and still win with infantry and vehicles?
Brandon Casteel: By the end of our public demo, I felt like players were finally beginning to come to grips with the power of air units in Tempest Rising. Air units are another unit type that has a higher “power budget” in some areas, like speed and damage, with the limitation that it’s hard to field a lot of them and that they have relatively low health for their cost. We also had GDF players loading up Skycranes (a flying transport that can temporarily become invisible) with Engineers and capturing enemy bases and harvesting operations. Balance is a moving target, as I like to say, but I think the air units in our game are quite powerful at this point.
GamesHedge: Was there a specific reason to skip naval units in the game? Can we expect to see them arrive at the game at some point?
Brandon Casteel: Naval as a gestalt concept introduces a tremendous amount of complexity to a game. You have to worry about what happens on the coastline, about how air units and ground units engage with naval units; you will have to figure out much more complex map design challenges, and it will decrease the number of units you will be able to produce for air and ground as well. I feel like it’s tricky enough to worry about getting the basics of an RTS right, and we would have done ourselves no favors trying to figure out the very complex challenges inherent in adding a naval layer to the game. Never say never, but I think a lot of people drastically underestimate how hard it is to make naval work. Very, very few games have done it right.
GamesHedge: Red Alert 3 introduces support powers for each unit, which increases the gameplay challenge significantly. Tempest Rising has support powers as well, but they are kept to a minimum. What is your take on this? Do you think Support Powers make or break an RTS?
Brandon Casteel: I think you’re talking about active abilities in a Real Time Strategy game. You see lots of active abilities in games like StarCraft and, as you said, in Red Alert 3.
GamesHedge: We have seen GDF and Tempest Dynasty in action so far in trailers, demos and playtests and so far the third faction has been a well-kept secret. Will Veti be available at the title’s full launch or will it arrive as later as a post-launch content update?
Brandon Casteel: The Veti will not be playable at launch.
GamesHedge: How different will Veti be from the two showcased factions in the game? Also, will we see the final faction in action before the full release?
Brandon Casteel: Each faction is pretty different from each other, but I think the Veti are a little more unique in their systems.
GamesHedge: How did you develop the unit movement system in Tempest Rising? It is one of the most sophisticated systems that we have seen in any modern RTS title. The units do not stack up on blocked paths; they actively look for the shortest route possible, and the attack move also ensures that the units are attacking the offensive units first. This is a huge achievement and one of our favourite mechanics of the game.
Brandon Casteel: Unit movement has been a matter of trial and error, a lot of testing and iteration. We have some phenomenally talented programmers on our team, and our design team has done its best to provide them with good input and feedback. We’ve also collected a lot of data from our players across all of our betas and demos and used that to help tune the movement in the game.
GamesHedge: The unit design is beautiful, including both infantry and vehicles. How much development time was spent on one unit on average? What was the hardest unit to design and implement in the game?
Brandon Casteel: Hmm, that’s a good question. I’m not sure I ever timed it precisely. There was a lot of overlap, with concept artists doing work on multiple units, then it getting passed on to modeling, animation, voice acting, VFX, and more. A unit passes through a lot of hands before it’s done. Not sure I have a good, clean answer on that one for you. As for the hardest to design, I think our Scrambler went through several iterations. But, no. It was easily the Dynasty’s Tempest Rig. That unit has gone through the most changes over the course of development. Well worth it, but it certainly was challenging to get right both visually and mechanically.
GamesHedge: Was developing infantry more challenging, or did vehicles take more of your time during development?
Brandon Casteel: We have more vehicles than infantry, but I don’t recall having challenges with either. There were a couple, like the Machinis, who has a visible mechanical exoskeletal frame, which I think caused our animators some trouble.
GamesHedge: How powerful are base defenses in Tempest Rising? Are they powerful enough to stop incoming attacks with enough placements, or does a player always need to bring in units to repel the attacks?
Brandon Casteel: This has, and continues to, change over the course of development. In our closed beta and one of our demos in 2024, we got a lot of feedback about how beefy and hard to take down turrets were, so we’ve scaled them back a little bit. Turrets are still pretty formidable, especially those available at Tier 2 and Tier 3 like the Voltaic Turret and Tempest Artillery, but you’ll probably need to back them up with some units. They’ll definitely slow down an assault and are more powerful than a lot of units pound for pound, but players are able to build big enough armies to brute force them.
GamesHedge: Okay we really have to ask this question. What is up with the Tempest Sphere? It is one of the most unique units we have seen in any RTS game and how did such a unit come into existence in the first place?
Brandon Casteel: There’s no really big story behind the Tempest Sphere, honestly. We decided pretty early on that we wanted Heavy vehicles that are able to crush smaller tanks, and a unit that is designed specifically around using that crush system is kind of needed, or at least the idea is right there waiting to be used. As for how it looks, that comes from the Dynasty’s desperation: their Tier 3 units are both kind of the easiest possible implementations that their scientists and engineers could come up with on short notice: the Sphere is basically just a Tempest engine wrapped in a big ball of armor. Plus, I thought it would be kind of an iconic unit. It’s certainly inspired a lot of talk and memes!
GamesHedge: Will there be a retail release for Tempest Rising? We know all RTS fans miss the infamous Red Alert 2 installation sequence. Would you guys be up for something like that if a retail release for PC is planned later?
Brandon Casteel: No news to share on this right now.
Tempest Rising is slated for release on PC via Steam on April 24, 2025. If you are interested in trying it out when it is launched, make sure to head over to its official Steam page and add it to your wishlist. Pre-purchase is also live, and if you pre-purchase the Deluxe Edition, you can jump into the game 7 days early. You can also download and try out its free demo, which offers you a taste of two missions from each faction’s main campaigns and Skirmish matches on different maps. Make sure to check out our preview of Tempest Rising as well.
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Are you looking forward to playing Tempest Rising, and are you excited to finally see the classic RTS formula coming back to life in the form of Tempest Rising? Let us know in the comments section below.
