Ex-Starcraft Devs Announce New Strategy Shooter Game Vaunted

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Lost Lake Games, a new studio founded by developers who previously worked on the popular strategy game StarCraft, has announced its first game, Vaunted. Vaunted blends the action of third-person shooters with the character progression of RPGs. StarCraft, a long-time favorite and a key title for Blizzard Entertainment, originally launched in 1998, with its sequel, StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, arriving in 2010. The franchise hasn’t seen a new release since then.

It’s been a while since fans last saw a new game in the popular StarCraft series. The last release, StarCraft: Remastered, came out in 2017 and paved the way for remakes of other classic Blizzard titles like Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3. Over the years, there have been many rumors about Blizzard revisiting StarCraft, including talk of StarCraft 3 and a cancelled first-person shooter called StarCraft: Ares. Now, a new studio formed by former StarCraft developers has officially announced their first project, Vaunted.

Vaunted Is a New Strategy Shooter RPG from Former StarCraft Devs

I was super hyped to see Lost Lake Games finally reveal their first game, Vaunted, at the Xbox showcase! The trailer looked awesome – it’s a turn-based strategy game, but with third-person shooting, which is a cool mix. It seems like you can target specific body parts on enemies, kinda like in Fallout, which I’m all about. They’re promising a really deep RPG system with skill trees, random power-ups during fights, and lots of ways to build out your characters. The studio is led by James Phinney, who used to be the lead designer on StarCraft, and a bunch of the team worked on StarCraft and Guild Wars too, so I have high hopes for this one!

I just watched the trailer for Vaunted, and it looks awesome! It’s a story-driven game where you play as three treasure hunters – Dyse, Gendril, and Kyvaath – exploring all sorts of cool places like ancient ruins, deserts, and space stations. What really got me excited is that the story is supposed to be branching, meaning our choices as these ‘unreliable narrators’ will actually change things and unlock different scenes. So, there’s a lot of replay value! Unfortunately, Lost Lake Games hasn’t given us a solid release date yet, just that it’s coming sometime in 2026. I’m already planning my first playthrough!

Vaunted’s gameplay blends ideas from several well-known games, taking the best parts of each. It combines the strategy of tactical RPGs with the action of shooter games, similar to what you’d find in Valkyria Chronicles. Players can target specific body parts, a feature that feels like the VATS system from the Fallout games. Currently, Vaunted is planned to be a PC-exclusive title, releasing on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Microsoft Store.

As a huge RPG fan, 2026 is already looking incredible! We’re finally getting a brand new Fable game from Microsoft – a complete reboot of the classic Lionhead series! And it’s not just that – the folks behind Pokemon are releasing their first game not called Pokemon, called Beast of Reincarnation, and it’s coming to Xbox Game Pass right away! I’m also really excited about Vaunted. The developers at Lost Lake Games know strategy games inside and out, so I think it’s going to be something special, even with so many other big RPGs coming out that year.

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2026-03-30 11:04