''Ashes of the Singularity'' is a

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to p ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

developed by

Oxide Games Oxide Games is an American video game developer based in Lutherville-Timonium, Maryland. The studio was founded in January 2013 by Brad Wardell and former Firaxis employees Dan Baker, Marc Meyer, Brian Wade, and Tim Kipp. History Oxide Game ...

and Stardock Entertainment. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on March 31, 2016. The game features massive battles involving thousands of units on vast battlefields. As such, it requires relatively high-end hardware. A standalone expansion pack, called ''Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation'' was released in November 2016, but was later merged into the main game.

Gameplay

''Ashes of the Singularity'' is a

, featuring two primary factions: the Post-Human Coalition and the Substrate. Its main distinction is its ability to handle thousands of individual units engaging in combat simultaneously, far greater than most other games of its kind, across large maps and without abstraction. This is achieved through a newly developed engine called ''Nitrous'' designed to fully leverage modern

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A compu ...

multi-core processor A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such ...

s, reflected in the relatively high system requirements (which include a quad-core processor). To allow players to effectively control such large numbers of units, groups of individual units can be combined into "meta-units" which operate in a cohesive manner, upon which complex strategies can be developed.

Development

''Ashes of the Singularity'' is powered by Oxide Games' in-house Nitrous Engine, and was the first video game to implement

DirectX 12 Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

support. It is also one of the first to support

Vulkan Vulkan is a low- overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher perfor ...

. An in-development version of the game was released commercially via

Steam Early Access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alph ...

on October 22, 2015. The full version of the game was released on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

on March 31, 2016. Because of the game's early DirectX 12 support and extensive use of

parallel computation Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

, it is commonly used as a

benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Benchmark (surveying), a point of known elevati ...

. Controversy erupted when Nvidia GPUs were found to perform poorly relative to their AMD counterparts on early beta versions of ''Ashes''; this was due to the game's use of asynchronous compute and shading features which are implemented in hardware on AMD

Graphics Core Next Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the codename for a series of microarchitectures and an instruction set architecture that were developed by AMD for its GPUs as the successor to its TeraScale microarchitecture. The first product featuring GCN was la ...

GPUs but had to be performed in software on Nvidia GPUs. On November 10, 2016, ''Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation'' was released. It is a standalone expansion that adds to the base game with more units, maps, and structures, as well as several interface tweaks. The total player count was also increased from 8 to 16 players. The expansion was later merged into the base game on February 16, 2017, after it became apparent that the separate games divided the player community. Stardock have been working on a linux-native client for some time. While no promise of a release date as of yet, there was hope it would be made available in 2019.

Reception

''Ashes of the Singularity'' received an "average" reception from critics according to aggregate review website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. Giving it a good score of 7.7, ''

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...

'' wrote: "This is a warzone where the shrewd general looking at the bigger picture will triumph over the fast-thinking ace with lightning hotkeys." ''

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games m ...

'' gave it a score of 75/100. ''

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

'' gave it a mixed review.

References

External links

* {{Stardock 2016 video games Early access video games Multiplayer and single-player video games Real-time strategy video games Singularitarianism Stardock games Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Geoff Knorr Windows games Windows-only games