The First Ever Stormgate Showmatch: TLO vs. MaNa 

Get early access to Stormgate by supporting the kickstarter: stormgatekickstarter.com/ I recommend watching the second map (13:15) - the graphics seem to be a bit better as spectator there.

It's so hard to tell units apart, otherwise the game looks fun and they chose the best casters for this showcase!

Iconic casters and nostalgic players- great choices for a first show match.

This is going to be hilarious to watch in about 4 years.

Nowhere near enough visual clarity between units.

Really missing the supply and worker count to gauge who is ahead or behind.

I wish they'd made the graphics more grim, as it just looks quite cartoony and I'm not 100% sold on it. Games looks really responsive and interesting, some great ideas on units. Just struggling with the aesthetic. Great to see some familiar faces, cant wait to see how the game and meta progresses

not gonna lie it's not hard to notice that units are not only derivative (mostly from starcraft and warcraft which is somewhat understandable since devs are from blizzard) but also don't have visual clarity...

Best casters to do it ! Glad they made it back together for this.

It’s funny how two factions so different in type aren’t as visually distinct as in sc2 where even a person unfamiliar with the game can tell the difference between the shiny golden laser faction, the robot men, and the gross alien monster faction. This game, I’m not sure what it is. But to me the dogs look like they could easily be a part of the infernal faction as they aren’t that much different from the fast fiends in style. Edit: it’s also weird how both factions have very similar looking and performing tier 1 “melee men”. When combat happens it just gets visually muddy and I can’t tell them apart.

Just feels like another Blizzard mobile game or a Starcraft/Warcraft DLC... understand this is early dev stage but looks subpar with the visuals aesthetics and units... Its just a heavily promoted/marketed game on social media right now to keep the hype going.

Feels like starcraft mod made in warcraft 3 engine

I wish devs all the best, however I must question their choice of aesthetics I just don't like how it looks - I didn't like it since initial reveal and hoped it will get changed but unfortunately it still looks like any generic mobile game you can find in app store it doesn't fit RTS at all, as others already pointed out it looks cartoony, doesn't have enough clarity and has no visual impact

Is this what it feels like when someone watches StarCraft for the first time?

Don't like the art style at all, makes everything look similar and don't stand out like it should (i blame the lighting). Units are hard to differentiate, some of them don't have unique features which you can instantly notice, making them look bland. Also, constantly showing rally points doesn't help. And team colors need some work - those helion-cyclones hybrids look like they're from some 3rd race. Creep camps look like an interesting idea, in theory. But it heavily depends on the map (and maps look and feel kinda meh so far). Hope the balancing is good. But brutes splitting look broken. That unit with E.T.C slide&stun looks broken as well, because you can chain it if you have 2+ of them. White health on top of beefy units? Looks rough.

I was hoping for a more realistic or gritty sci fi art design instead of cartoonish. Hopefully the gameplay makes up for it..

I'm really excited for this game, I'm hoping it works out. I just hope they upgrade visual clarity, I find it hard to track which units are which. That might just be lack of familiarity though.

Love the concept of the way the units work. But the visual design screams F2P Mobile game to me and I'm just not a fan of that, but I'm still very hopeful.

Graphics sucks right ? Hope its because its in alpha

And Tastosis together to cast it! Awesome

guys after watching this just remember how blessed we are to still have BW/SC2

I'm so happy to see more RTS games come out... I really hope the units have some more "pop" to be easier to notice against the backgrounds, but I like what they're going for. Between this and Tempest Rising especially, it's an exciting time to like RTS

a competitive game where they didn't have a caster UI as primary focus of alpha OR beta? edit: this game is definitely not sticking around for long

The two factions dont look different enough.

I really wish these guys all the best, and I understand the game is still in development, so I'm not trying to poopoo it too much... but man. The fonts and the small text with a lot of space around them, the static UI, the way the units, buildings and maps themselves looks. It really, really reminds me of an old Flash game. It's like someone made a pretty okay RTS game in Flash.

Bad graphics, visual clarity, and UI. Why does Frost Giant keep showcasing underwhelming gameplay/footage???

I think giant grant got it right In that there is very little in the wow and cool factors. It's difficult to understand what's going on at the best of times and what animations we do have are quite underwhelming It needs to be more than a " hey guys remember blizzard before it went to hell " Trip in memory lane that will not be enough to sustain

The names of units and structures bothers me a little. It feels like the naming back in the Warcraft 2 days and makes the game feel dated to me.

I grew up with starcraft and so it's familiar. It's just my jam. This reminds me a lot of Warcraft 3, which was very much not my jam. But I'm open to giving everything a chance.

I don't particularly hate the cartoonish asthetic. Warcraft 3 has somewhat of a cartoonish flare to it (certainly more than SC). But the visual clarity is not great. I have a hard time telling units apart at a glance, which I think isn't great from a new player perspective. Overall I'm very happy with how the game is turning out though and I'm excited to watch this game unfold. I hope they can focus more on the asthetics once everything else is squared away. I do love the way the terrain looks though!! Very visually appealing to look at.

I've grown tired of the Wow-ification of Blizzard graphics (soft, round edges with big proportions), I really wish it had a darker tone like SC1's gritty graphics where you FEEL and SEE it's a war in space, etc. I wish the cartoony graphics will be changed for release.

It's pretty cool to see a new RTS, and I do hope it will be successful and fun to play. I'd love to see units that look a bit more iconic. What i've seen so far isn't very exciting, and though units do seem to have their own unique role in both armies, they all feel same-ish, from a purely spectator standpoint. I can't help but feel like this is "bitter starcraft" in that a lot of what I'm seeing looks like "we wanted to do this in starcraft, they didn't let us, so we'll do it here." An ultra with a charge, a reverse Archon, same-y helions... And the graphics look very 2000s to me. That doesn't mean the game is bad, and I'm no hater, but it does seem to me the game is haunted by SC2 and struggles to stand on its own two feet. Again, I could be very wrong here, SC2 is so iconic, it's hard to leave its shadow. I do wish this game manages to become its own thing.

I really like this mechanics with splitting demons. Something truly fresh.

The infernals just look super OP - the white health is an insane buff and the Brute into fiend just seems broken basically 3 units in 1 each time. In the first game probably coulda split the first 5 brutes into fiends and cleared an entire mining camp. really hope they balance this much better and introduce some diversity - very much a SC meets Warcraft game. Some good ideas here and there with lots of potential, but the cartoony look is not helping.

SO far the unit design is trach. What the hell is a dude with a giant sward... But I want to say TLO is a legend. When Sc2 beta and alpha TLO used nuked and his games were epic! Thoses who knows, knows.

I'm so happy to see these two in the same room again

Just tell us who the third faction is, Frost Giant. It's obviously going to be some Protoss/Angelic faction, I just want to see the units already.

Oh...TLO and MaNa plus the Tastosis duo so much nostalgic. The new RTS game looks promising and it's still in early development so I'm really looking forward to how the game will look in a few years.

Looks promising, I think I would probably just prefer some visual clarity maybe? A lot of the units were predominantly grey and it was hard to tell what units i was looking at as they all kinda look a bit too similar together in clumps. Also Purple vs Green units kinda blended into the terrain so I think now I understand why a lot of games just do red vs blue.

SC: Vulture... Hellion... SG:... Hedgehog! :'D I can't with this game... still, I'm rooting for Frost Giant to achieve the game they want to achieve. Agree on need for visual clarity. Some things also feel floaty, but I imagine that's the animation not keeping up to mechanics changes. Keep at it! Looking forward to more!

Meh not that impressed.. it's hard to tell what you are looking at. With sc2 I can easily follow exactly what is going on. This just seems like small models that look very similar to each other.

Definitely the most exciting stormgate match I’ve seen. Players look like they are evolving the meta and the casters are imba ❤

Whoa. Ok, I'm a little bit excited now. Also, the love in having Tastosis and these players here. Ah, this is made for me. 🙂

All the critique about a brand new game aside, the professionalism of these 2 is unmatched. They called every unit by its name in this game, and even said "..if you are familiar with Starcraft..". This game has serious potential!

Best thing about it is Tasteless and Artosis, game looks highly uninspiring

Beyond All Reason is light years ahead of this.

although the gameplay looks great this game feels like what happens when you get a bunch of devs to make the whole game without hiring any kind of artist to make an artstyle or interesting unique asthetic. a lot of the units looks lame and boring and the art style in general is a weird cartoony feel. a lot of the demon unit especially look absolutely uninspired.

This looks like a mobile game made with random store-bought assets peppered in. The game has no style. Are the devs really so delusional that they actually believe this is good enough to show to the public?

I've notice people are saying that it looks similar to wc3. But wc3 didn't have this muddy, pastel, plasticine look to it. Everything was so vibrant in wc3, whereas here things really blend together in an unappealing and hard to distinguish way. I wish the devs the best but I think the aesthetic needs a lot of work, not just because it looks bad but because to me it affects readability for both players and spectators.

I'd completely forgotten that this is the same group of people who gave us the original 4 pool rush back when the spawning pool only cost 150 minerals.

I don't know guys. Seems too early for show matches. This looks half-baked.

Has anyone else seen those “What English sounds like to non English speakers” videos? That’s what it sounds like to hear Tastetosis cast a game I know nothing about

Finally we gets Orcs in space

"Mom, I want to get StarCraft!" "We have StarCraft at home!" The StarCraft at home:

I'm not sure about this decision to aim the art design at 10 year olds, meanwhile the gameplay is so similar to RTS's of 25 years back. This game isn't even that different from Dune 2; how the units are produced and buildings placed on the map for example. Games like Total Annihilation, Battle Realms, and Supreme Commander showed the way to the future, yet here they are trying to get kids to buy into ancient gameplay concepts. I'm not sure it will work.

Great match to watch! This really improves my hopes for this game, even better to see artosis and tasteless casting! Thanks for this video! TLO and Mana did great.

Looks like a fucking mobile game.

Gotta give these guys a lot of credit. A lot of things to work out visually but all in all the bones are there for sure. Just remember StarCraft 2 to this day gets updates and tweaks so don’t be too harsh or too quick to judge.

Yes it is pre-alpha as I understand it but if this is their base for their game, man, this is dead in the water. I hate to say it but everything I've seen of the game simply doesn't innovate, and it goes without saying that if you are to attempt to put yourself next to SC2 you actually do have to bring a lot of solid new ideas, otherwise you should attempt making a game in another genre. Just off the top of my head, maybe Stormgate should have explored a new kind of framework for synergy timings, maybe focused a bit more on fewer units but more skillshots, a different kind of unit command interaction - split somewhere between hotkey-automatic positioning and manual control or whatever, et cetera.

Really hope there is improvement in the replay/ boradcasting interface. such as showing supply counts or resources

I dont remember the faction names off the top of my head but so far it seems like the demon faction has been given every interesting mechanic in the game, while the "totally not terrans" have basically nothing going for them. I mean the demons have creep that gives their units extra health, they have units that explode into more units, they have units that can drop creep right in the enemy base for an instant beachhead for their army... What can the other faction do? They have a Vulcan that shoots good unless it moves? 🤷 If both sides do have interesting mechanics then the terran army needs some better special effects to show what's going on.

For future casts, there is a much better place to put those player cameras. The UI in the cast takes up so much space and almost half of the utilized space at the bottom is being wasted. I think you should consider placing the player cameras in the unused box on the bottom left (you can put that ESL Stormgate emblem literally anywhere else on the screen and have it resized to suit your needs). The player cameras can also be vertical to make them fit appropriately into the box. We do not need horizontal views of the players who really aren't doing much to begin with until their reaction happens at the end of the match. People generally are not watching them regardless.

SC2HL and Tastosis convinced me to give it a try and watch. On any other channel or with different casters I wouldn't have spent time on it

There are moments where I really feel the spark of SC WC competitive play, but it's not there yet. I wish the dev team luck going forward. I'm eager to see what they can do.

Plz: Better Color Coding for the viewer. Eg. Red vs Blue For us viewer.

I saw TLO’s name in my algorithm after such a long time and I HAD to see what was up. Stormgate sure looks like SC2 but different. Don’t know if I’ll bother playing, but I hope I get to see more amazing footage with TLO in the future. Was always a fan of his daring Terran plays!

Yeah, visual design for this game still looks really convoluted. Differentiation between units, structures, favtions, recources is not clear and contrasting enough. If they want to make a compettitve multiplayer RTS with some longevity, that's gotta change. There's a reason why the most long-lived RTS always had iconic design where you could pick up what is what from a glance. And understand the besics right away. That's why for example in Warcraft/Starcraft the resources were Gold/Gas and Wood/Minerals and were called such. They have tine to improve, but so far I am not impressed.

I am excited for this game. I hope, it will be big fat success. So far, I would like to see improved clarity. It's hard to see units. When they attack each other, there are some attack effects, that cover them and it's hard to see, what is happening. The fights are less exciting than in sc1 by a lot. That should be improved too.

My only complaint as someone who knows nothing about this game is that the units themselves are hard to tell apart and none of them had that "Cool" factor if that's a thing. So mainly considering aesthetics and design.

What’s the themes for each faction represented today? The infernals seem like they are supposed to take fights and use their smaller/weaker “summons” to stay longer and perhaps secure a victory in a fight? I couldn’t figure out vanguards theme

Gotta say I'm not super into unit design but I can tell all my StarCraft skills could be transferred well. Best of all, it feels sweet to have tastosis back at it at the ground level of a brand new game.

They probably need to tune down how tough Infernals are. Units that start out tanky, with white health on top, and the ability to spawn cheap fast attack units in the middle of the fight makes Infernals seem unstoppable once they get enough of them on the field.

I can't believe my eys, it's RTS. I never thought there are RTSs beside Starcraft.

The weaver looks sick, unit that stood out the most for sure

all i saw was healthbars fighting each other.

Idk but zero space looks more interesting 🤷‍♂️

How did I miss this?! Oh man I need to pay more attention.

Tasteless & Artosis THE BEST commentary team!

needs legendary soundtrack but EXCELLENT concept direction, then some next level graphics

"Tasteless and Artosis here" wow throwback to being in college watching SC2 WoL over 10 years ago.

yeah nah. as much as sc2 sometimes makes me wannna off myself stormgate doesnt seem to do too much new. maybe its the forresty map but this is too warcrafty for me. its too focused on small armies with battles that last longer and you have more time to micro instead of trying to populate as much bases and constantly trading and remaxing with good macro.

Also Tasotsis is amazing! If anyone can make it work, they can!

tastosis casting the first ever pro stormgate game - what a time to be alive!!!!!

With Tasteless and Artosis?! Wow the hype is REAL

Hmmm I find it hard to distinguish units... i think you need to declutter a bit the visuals , also it needs better movement. I have very high hopes this will be a very good game :) keep up the good work. Also hooray for Mana and Artosis being in the video

It's clear to see that at this stage the game lacks observer's presentation and thus - the negative comments. But the game and the mechanics so far looks promising. Units need visual correction, you can't see whether it's map's mob or enemy unit. The bars above units are misleading, some progress bar, then hardly visible hp bars when on low health. The "time for upgrade" popups were better than on each unit separately. But i think this should be part of observer gui. Also the GUI looks like old version of Starcraft + Warcraft, very big static elements centerized. Why everything should be connected - let it go to each side. The unit presentation next to the map is unnecessary at least.

Needs an observer UI. I don't know supply or resources for either side.

I don't think the graphics are bad, but I have the impression that the textures used are soft. Otherwise I love the gameplay and I'm excited to see new mechanics like the catapult and new units in the future

The game looks promising as far as mechanics and gameplay goes. Indeed it still needs time in the oven and polishing. Looking forward to it!

I realise its still very early days, but currently seems like Infernal host ability of fiends generating from infected enemy units is OP'ed & needs balancing

hype is real, I hope this game brings back the gold era of rts back!

The big question is: Can the devs make RTS more beginner/Casual friendly?

This is the game where people who don't have what it takes to keep up in SC ends up on.

Units are waaaaay to small for me

I don't know. Doesn't look that impressive to me... I'm not sure what the hype is about, just looks like warcraft 3 minus the heroes. I'm certainly not blown away... I'm going to go play Starcraft now.

Art direction doesnt work…

I think it has the same issue with war3r where units don't look different enough to actually notice what's going on. But a lot of the mechanics seem very fun.

I don't know if it's just me, but I have a tough time telling what's going on during larger battles.

Do the players have the same zoom? I feel like I’m looking at toys sorta. Game looks awesome gameplay wise

TLO looks so stressed, meanwhile Mana is hard chilling