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Matador trailer shows Syndicate-style city brought to its knees by mechs

Matador Stellar Jockeys

The great leader is dead. You have one night to liberate the nine city districts of Solo Nobre. Saddle up and ride your mech into town, Matador.

Influenced by Xcom, Syndicate, and Battletech, Matador looks like something that would have been very comfortably released in the 90s

First, check out this adrenaline-throbbing trailer:

I’m loving that synth and drum machine soundtrack. It would fit right in with a dark days of disco playlist.

Matador has you try and liberate Solo Nobre. You pick a vehicle, two weapons to fit to it, and a ground crew to support you and you go to war. The crew are randomised soldiers, like those of 1994’s Xcom. Each starts a little naff but soon levels up into something more skilled.

“As it stands pilots will persist through the entire game with you, provided they survive,” writes the team. “So yes we’re including permadeath, and yes we’re including some form of pilot skill progression. The longer these guys stay alive the more their skills improve and the more they’ll confer that bonus to their squadmates. Pilots themselves are assigned to a squad of units, and will confer a portion of their skill bonus to that squad so long as they remain in the field. An example would be a pilot who has a +10 bonus to accuracy and who confers a +5 accuracy bonus to the other tanks in the squad.

“The game itself appears to be evolving along rogue-like-like territory, in that randomization and skill progression / unlocking will play a major role (even if the combat itself is much more akin to a faster paced Crusader).”

Each time you die you have to begin your run on the nine districts again. Though you may have unlocked new weapons and vehicles to try it with.

You can also find allies to pilot friendly vehicles for you. Meaning later levels see you commanding a whole squad of battlemechs and tanks.

The city will be torn apart by your actions. “Many games seem to only pay lip service to collateral damage, or if it’s a highlight it’s part of a big dramatic scripted sequence which the player has no control over,” write the team. “We want the player to finish a level and be awed by the havok they’ve wrought, and know every bit of rubble is directly connected with them.”

“Another exciting thing about Matador is that the projectiles are actual physics objects traveling through space (there are hitscan weapons, -lasers-, but that’s because, well, they’re lasers),” continue the team in another blog entry. “The player must manually aim, and in doing so must lead targets, accounting for projectile velocity. Additionally, the trajectories can be affected by vehicular momentum as well as global effects like wind.”

Clearly there’s a lot of Matador to be intrigued about. The team are making a simple real-time strategy game that hinges on randomisation and unlocks to keep each playthrough fresh. If it matches the style of the trailer faithfully then it looks to be a compelling piece of work.

We’ll keep you updated.