This evening at TwitchCon 2016 here in San Diego, Amazon Game Studios announced its first three games: Breakaway, New World, and Crucible.
“Powered by Amazon Lumberyard and designed to be streamed, Amazon’s games aim to be as fun to watch as they are to play”
In addition to announcing the games, Amazon Game Studios previewed and provided the first public, hands-on demo of Breakaway, a mythological sport brawler that will begin accepting a limited number of gamers into alpha later this year. Amazon Game Studios is building all three titles on the Amazon Lumberyard game engine, and each will include new Twitch features that put broadcasters in the spotlight and bring spectators into the action.
Here’s a little more about the games:
Breakaway: Legends alone. Champions Together.
Breakaway is a 4v4 mythological sport brawler built for fast action, teamwork, and live-streaming. Players assemble a team from an expanding roster of legendary warriors, including the relentless gladiator Spartacus, the twisted sorceress Morgan Le Fay, and the bloodthirsty warlord Vlad the Impaler. At the start of each round, warriors can summon persistent buildables onto the playing field that dynamically alter the game. Buildables can besiege foes, shield teammates, or create new pathways through the arena. Players fight for dominance across fabled locations such as El Dorado, Atlantis, and Styx. They battle to control the Relic–the center of Breakaway’s action–passing it to teammates, defending it from attackers, and smashing it into an opponent’s base to score.
Breakaway is powered by Amazon Lumberyard and integrates directly with Twitch. Breakaway introduces four new ways for the Twitch community to interact with broadcasters. Metastream allows streamers to customize their broadcasts with real-time stat overlays. Broadcaster Match Builder lets broadcasters invite their followers to join their matches. Broadcaster Spotlight adds to the excitement of streaming. It tells players when they’re in a match that’s being broadcast, and lets them follow the broadcaster with a single click. Stream+ gives broadcasters new ways to interact with their viewers through polls, and by allowing viewers to wager loyalty points that are redeemable for in-game rewards.
- Sign up for the Breakaway alpha: www.playbreakaway.com
- Watch Breakaway action throughout TwitchCon at www.twitch.tv/playbreakaway
- Read Amazon Game Studios Orange County studio head Patrick Gilmore’s blog: https://games.amazon.com/article/build-for-twitch
New World is a massively multiplayer, open-ended sandbox game that allows players to carve out their own destiny with other players in a living, cursed land. Players decide how to play, what to do, and whom to work with–or against–in an evolving world that transforms with seasons, weather, and time of day. Players can band together to reclaim monster-haunted wilds and build thriving civilizations, or strike out alone, surviving in the face of supernatural terrors and murderous player bandits. With emergent gameplay and rich social features, including deep Twitch integration with broadcaster-led events, achievements, and rewards, the only limit in the New World is a player’s ambition.
Crucible is a battle to the last survivor on a hostile, alien world. Players choose and customize heroes, making alliances and betraying allies on their path to victory. An additional player heightens the drama by triggering events, live-streaming the battles, and interacting with viewers.
Quote:
“Watching and interacting with broadcasters and the communities on Twitch has inspired us to think about games in a new way—to ask ourselves ‘what would it look like to create a game with broadcasting and viewing in mind from the very start?’ It’s clear the experiences that fans have outside the game, from viewing and broadcasting to live events and esports, are huge sources of entertainment,” said Mike Frazzini, Vice President of Amazon Games. “We’ve hired some of the best creators in the world to build games that we hope will be as fun to watch as they are to play. We’re excited to reveal a first look at our titles, and invite fans and broadcasters to share what they think and join us in shaping the development of our games.”