Here is an earlier September preview from RPS
And here is some more earlier background infomation from Gamescom 2011 coverage. It looks to be released sometime in 2012 if all goes well.
Edit: Fixed titleSnowberry Connection, the independent international production fund previously responsible for funding and developing such award-winning (but niche) products as …Combat Mission: Afghanistan and Mount & Blade™: With Fire & Sword, today announced its next big project: the non-linear fantasy turn-based strategy, MASTERS OF THE BROKEN WORLD™. Offering global, strategic and tactical levels of gameplay, MBW features the traditional “good vs. evil” decision dilemma, where the consequences of players’ choices significantly influence the outcome of the main game. Rebellions are best put out with a few legions of zombies … but if you’ll need this particular province at a later time, you’ll live to regret some of your easy decisions.
The game is currently confirmed for the PC platform with a tentative 2012 release date (there is also a possibility of a further Mac release, once the developers complete surgical removal of their “PC only and forever” knuckle tattoos). The product will arrive via traditional retail in Russia, Poland and Germany, with the international version becoming available digitally in the rest of the world. A Collector’s Edition, featuring the complete art-book and the encyclopedia of the Broken World, is also in the plan for retail markets, with the possibility of ordering it from the US together with a free copy of the extensive German or Russian dictionaries.
The story behind MASTERS OF THE BROKEN WORLD is perhaps telling of today’s return of the video games industry to its glorious roots: one talented designer builds a prototype in his garage (Alexey Bokulev); one curious publisher picks it up for a local Russian release (Snowball Studios), to receive 80%+ ratings from the press and the community (proof link: http://www.ag.ru/games/eador_sotvorenie" target="_blank); finally, one stubborn producer (Alexander Souslov) puts this designer together with the determined indie team that has an excellent proprietary engine (Unicorn Games Studio), to discover that an indie fund is willing to pay not only for the full-cycle production of a proper remake, but also for a few international press-releases and a small booth at GamesCom 2011 (Snowberry Connection). And look Mum, no hands – here we come!
MASTERS OF THE BROKEN WORLD is often written about as one of the first children of the new age of publishing – where opportunities for direct digital distribution make it possible to create games focused just on the quality of the gameplay, and not the marketing noise that surrounds the traditional games business. It seems that nowadays, especially in the indie scene, one can recoup the budget without selling one’s soul to a multinational publisher who knows how to screw up one’s product by trying to make it appeal to retired Estonian schoolteachers in order to reach the ultimate mass-market bonanza. How do you make a profit making games? Well, you make it by making good games; it’s that simple.
“I’ve been publishing games in Russia for 15 years, with a variety of content becoming available as the industry evolved, and every single year we had perhaps three games that made us proud of our industry and thirty-three that flew by like bananas in the jungle,” says Sergei Klimov, Snowberry Connection’s Director of Business. “After we sold our Russian publishing operation last year, my partners and I were looking for a way to go back to that happy place where you love to play what you develop and publish. With MBW, we believe that we have found it: Alexey is a very gifted designer, and we’re going to help his project unleash its commercial potential through the policy of not messing up his creative decisions, but just providing the production support that he needs for the product. Snowberry’s role as the publisher is to help the right audience find this game. We loved Battle Isle, Incubation, Spellcross, as well as the older HoMM games, and we’re confident that in the genre of turn-based strategies, Masters of the Broken World will set a pretty high standard when the game goes out next year or whenever it is ready.”