It was previously reported that a "Warhammer" role-playing game developed by emerging studio Thought Pennies and not yet officially announced has been canceled around the end of 2024 due to the publisher's withdrawal of investment.A spokesperson for the studio later confirmed that the project is a PVE role-playing game based on the background of "Age of Sigmar" and plans to launch on PC, console and mobile platforms.The game is developed by Thought Pennies in partnership with Games Workshop and is financially supported by Nexon.
Early live footage:
Although the cooperation is progressing smoothly, the spokesperson said that Nexon made a "strategic adjustment" at the end of 2024 and decided to suspend the project and terminate development. This situation also corroborated the studio's earlier layoffs.Months after the project was revealed, the first batch of development materials has now surfaced, showing a number of unreleased concept images, early gameplay footage, and cutscene footage.
According to information disclosed in the portfolio of former Thought Pennies artists and supported by the resumes of other developers, it is currently confirmed that the internal code name of the game is "Warhammer A`oS: Dark Frontier".
The portfolio showcases a large amount of content developed based on the UE5 engine, including environment and character concept atlases, and some designs are also reflected in the actual machine screens.
The leaked video data shows the dual-hero gameplay from a third-person perspective, including rough cutscenes and melee and long-range combat tests against different creatures.Judging from the task descriptions in the interface, most of the content should belong to the prologue chapter of the game.
The core combat system includes the basic action modules of this type of game: normal attack, heavy attack, sprint, jump, dodge and enemy lock.Each hero is equipped with four special skills, such as firing a gun to shock the enemy or spreading gunpowder to cause an explosion with a fire attack.The four skills include the use of necklace props - the icon prompt next to the health bar can be seen. This setting may provide life recovery or other gain effects as a passive skill.
With Nexon terminating the project, Thought Pennies' hard work may never see the light of day.The company announced a licensing cooperation with Games Workshop in 2021, which means that this work had been developed for about three years before cancellation.
This is the second "Age of Sigmar" game to die in recent times.The previous game "Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Arena of Souls" was a multiplayer online strategy game. Although it was not canceled in the traditional sense, it was launched in 2022 and then closed its servers in mid-2024.
However, fans of the "Warhammer" series can still look forward to a number of blockbuster new games: including the highly anticipated sequel to the RTS series "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4" and "Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3".
Game concept map:
