Highlights

  • Starship Troopers: Extermination features Carnage on Planet X11 update in June, with bug corpses becoming strategic elements.
  • Casper Van Dien reprises his role as Johnny Rico in the game, helping to establish the Starship Troopers franchise experience.
  • Knights Peak's focus on persistent carnage and climbing bug piles brings movie moments into the video game experience.

Knights Peak, a newly-announced premium label from publisher MY.GAMES, came out of the gate with a slate of upcoming titles and familiar favorites now unified under its flag. This includes new publishing deals for games like Starship Troopers: Extermination, Nikoderiko: The Magical World, and Mandragora, with Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Blast Brigade in its back catalog.

Knights Peak is doing its best to establish the Starship Troopers title as an authentic franchise experience. To that end, Starship Troopers: Extermination has Casper Van Dien–Johnny Rico from the film franchise–as a voice actor. Van Dien reprises his role from the films, now guiding the young troops in the never-ending war against the bugs.

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June Update Brings the Carnage

Starship Troopers: Extermination is already in Early Access, and the 0.8 update, Carnage on Planet X11, will bring new features to the game in early June. These new features go a long way in helping it further establish its Starship Troopers identity.

  • 0.8 Update, Carnage on Planet X11, releases at the end of June.
    • New Carnage System that leaves Bug corpses in-game, allowing them to pile up and become strategic elements of the battlefield
    • New battleground: Planet X-11
    • Enhanced Bug Mechanics including Armor and Weak Points

  • 1.0 Launch in October 2024
    • Single-Player Campaign including Johnny Rico actor Casper Van Dien
    • Console Release for PC and PS5
    • New enemies, locations, and more

During a recent presentation, the part Knights Peak focused a lot of attention on is the titular carnage. Bodies of slain bugs persist on the battlefield, and as they stack up, the Federation’s troops can climb them like terrain features, creating hills out of the corpses of bugs. This is fairly consistent with the way the films for Starship Troopers relied on extensive use of practical effects to communicate the enormity of its war. Famously, the movie used 300,000 blank rounds in filming, which was thought to be a record at the time. The game’s persistent carnage follows in that tradition.

Peter Maurice, the lead on Starship Troopers: Extermination with developer Offworld Industries, gave Game ZXC a look at the new update.

We’re bringing the movie into the video game by being able to climb on bug piles to get the best vantage point over the bugs. It’s a system that we’ve developed in-house, from the ground up, and it’s really about bringing carnage and the war to the bugs, and being able to show the persistent damage throughout the world. I’m so excited to share it with the community … Being able to bring those movie moments into a video game for the rest of the world to experience has been so much fun.

The titular planet, X11, is also an interesting battleground. The action takes place in the rings around a gas giant and, in a first for the game, features both indoor and outdoor combat segments. X11 is home to a listening post in the Tibannis System, deep within arachnid territory. Players will be tasked with the Teefang array, a crucial tool the Federation has to monitor the bugs.

The bugs themselves will have armor and weak points in the new patch as well. Weak points, Maurice explained, are more than hitting the right spot–it has to be with the right weapon as well. This adds more depth to gunplay and more strategy to loadout choices, potentially leading to moments like Rico's tanker bug kill in the first Starship Troopers movie.

The new Carnage system should go a long way in getting Starship Troopers: Extermination to 1.0, and it's a strong debut for Knights Peak to boot.