Age of Wonder: a big surprise for Paradox’s cult license

Age of Wonder is undoubtedly one of the most cult franchises when it comes to 4X strategy games and it has great news for fans.

It’s been more than 9 years sinceAge of Wonder did not have the right to a canonical episode. After trying the adventure of science fiction with Age of Wonder: Planetfall in 2019, Paradox had left fans on the floor, until today.

Surprise ! Age of Wonder is back in great shape!

Without warning, the publisher has just announced the imminent arrival of Age of Wonder 4, nearly nine years after the third opus. This new episode will reconnect with his first love and will opt for a fantastic universe where magic, heroic fantasy and surreal creatures reEsports Extrassupreme.

The game will take up the main lines of its predecessors in terms of gameplay, still just as strategic in the purest line of the 4X of the genre. The studio also specifies that the narration will be at the heart of the experience and that it should even dust off everything that has been done in the 4X genre for ages. Great ambitions on paper then.

The teaser meanwhile, only lets us glimpse a few seconds of in-game images, a particularly colorful artistic direction and a few chubby shapes. However, the developers took the opportunity to offer us no less than 40 minutes of gameplay during a special livestream. We can see different game mechanics well known to fans of the license, many units to manage, divide into six different factions, and gameplay skillfully combining turn-by-turn, unbeatable in this kind of game, and particularly strategic fights. It will also always be a question here of game phases on a board, like a Civilization 6 for example, and tactical confrontations with XCOM sauce where the placement and the terrain will be just as important as the power of fire from our units.

Bonus, Age of Wonder 4 already gives us its release date. The game is expected on May 2, 2023 on PS5, Xbox Series and PC.