Rodeo Games, creators of 2013's well-received Warhammer Quest [$4.99], are once again partnering up with Games Workshop to create another turn-based strategy game in the Warhammer universe. Called Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion, it has the distinction of being one of the first mobile games to use Epic's new Unreal Engine 4, and it's the first of Rodeo's games that is in full 3D. As you may be able to tell by the name, the game focuses on the elite secret order of Space Marines known as the Deathwatch. As Rodeo describes it, "Our game is set in the Astolat Sector which is under threat of being consumed by Tyranids from Hive Fleet Leviathan. The Deathwatch are tasked with undertaking high risk missions to turn the tide of war and defeat the invaders."





Beyond the fancy schmancy graphics and Rodeo's proven brand of turn-based strategy gameplay, Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion has two big new features that sound really cool. One is an in-game Codex that allows you to discover more than 250 items, relics, weapons and even marines and collect them in something along the lines of a sticker book. The other major feature is multiplayer which will see you bringing your beefed up character from the single-player campaign and testing their mettle against up to 3 other players online. Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion should be arriving sometime in early summer, so look for more details to trickle out in the coming months.

If you need a secret kept, you can absolutely trust Rodeo Games with it. Over a year ago we learned that the next game from the makers of Warhammer Quest would be another Games Workshop property, but aside from that we knew nothing at all. I prodded. I pleaded. Rodeo would divulge nothing. Pocket Tactics spies skulked off into the night to uncover what they could.

“It’s a game about 40K Inquisitors,” reported one. Other reports corroborated this. “It’s about Inquisitors, but it’s based on Cooking Mama,” said another. Eventually, I started to wonder if our spies had been turned. “It’s not a game — it’s an app that turns Siri into an Ork.”

Finally last week, after months of fruitless hypotheses and unworkable theories, Rodeo’s Ben Murch reached out to reveal what the Guildfordians had been working on. “Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion is set in the Warhammer 40,000 Universe, and focuses on the Deathwatch,” Murch tells us. “Our game is set in the Astolat Sector which is under threat of being consumed by Tyranids from Hive Fleet Leviathan. The Deathwatch are tasked with undertaking high risk missions to turn the tide of war and defeat the invaders.”

No Inquisitors. No Cooking Mama. But lots and lots of Space Marines and their most famous foes. “It’s a turn-based strategy game,” says Murch, “with the emphasis on strategy.” Now we’re talking.

Let’s pause a second for the sake of those not steeped in Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K lore: in the far, far future, the galaxy is a neo-gothic fascist hellhole, where the peace (such as it is) is kept by the Emperor’s Space Marines — genetically engineered post-human goliaths in powered armor. Prominent in the Space Marines’ rogues gallery are the parasitic Tyranids, who in the GW board games of the 1980s were a wink-wink nudge-nudge riff on Ridley Scott’s Aliens, but grew into an identity of their own.

In the 40K universe, every Space Marines chapter must provide a few of its finest Marines to the Deathwatch, a sort of special forces unit that specializes in fighting non-human aliens, or xenos in Games Workshop parlance.

There have already been Space Marines-versus-Tyranids games of course — starting with the fondly-remembered 1989 board game Space Hulk, which got a digital adaptation of its own a couple of years ago. But it’s the Deathwatch (and its intrinsic diversity) that frees Rodeo’s game from previous turn-based Tyranid-fighting games.

“The gameplay difference [between Deathwatch and] Space Hulk is huge,” says Murch. “More versatility in your team composition, weapons and wargear, means huge tactical flexibility and pace of play. You can take a whole load of Space Wolf Assault dudes into a mission, tool them up with shields, and fling them at the enemy! Or you could bring along Ultramarine Devastators, lead by the Master of Relics and perforate the enemy from afar. Or you could compose a team of Tactical guys armed solely with gravity guns to literally halt the enemy in their track. Or almost anything in-between and loads more, besides.”

Having a diverse lot of Space Marines is just the start of it. Space Hulk’s cast of Tyranid bad guys was rather same-y — ravenous monsters from space get boring after a while when they offer less variety than a North Korean barbershop.

“They’re a pretty interesting bunch of xenos to turn into the bad guys,” Murch tells us. “Not only is every unit very different (great for gameplay), but they all look hugely different. Obviously not the best from an art schedule point of view, but great for telling who’s who on the battlefield. They also provide a great kicking off point to the Deathwatch story. Our game is set in the Astolat sector. The Tyranids want to devour it. Who knows what ancient evil or foreign technology they may disturb along their way.” By that, I think Murch is suggesting that Games Workshop has given Rodeo a pretty free reign with the setting — Astolat seems like a part of space they’ve invented from scratch, meaning that just about anybody from GW’s vast universe of characters might show up.

Deathwatch is being built in Unreal Engine 4 (” I think we’re one of the first iOS games to be using it”) which Rodeo have used to create a fully-3D gameplay space. Unlike Warhammer Quest and their Hunters series, the camera in Deathwatch freely rotates. Another Rodeo first is online multiplayer. “You can actually take your marines from the game (with all their own wargear), and battle your friends,” Murch says. “Up to 4 players are supported.” There’s also an in-game Codex which acts like a sticker book that tracks unique items and heroes you’ve uncovered in the campaign — there’s over 250 unique weapons and other items in the game, Rodeo says.


I asked Murch how Rodeo had settled on this idea. After the huge success of Warhammer Quest, why not make another Games Workshop board game adaptation?

“It was a bit strange really. We took the idea to GW, but they had already talked about us doing a Deathwatch game. So when we pitched it, they were pretty much straight on-board! As a studio, we wanted to get back into space after our foray into fantasy. Not that we particularly prefer one or the other, it’s just a nice change of pace. I’m sure we’ll head back to a fantasy setting at some point.

“We also wanted to go back to crafting our own game experiences. Warhammer Quest was amazing. Like, seriously, a dream come true. However, there was always this feeling in the studio that we should follow the board game rule set. Not a requirement set upon us by GW or anything, more out of respect for the existing game. By taking an IP and not an existing game, we pretty much had carte blanche when it came to what type of game it could be. The first few months of development were taken up with trying out ideas. Someone would come up with a ruleset, and we’d play it using a tabletop and some miniatures. It was actually a very similar process to how we started the company with our first game Hunters.”

Deathwatch: Tyranid Invasion will be out on iOS “early summer” and I, for one, can’t wait to play it. We’ll do a preview just as soon as we can.

There’s a trailer below with the most unexpectedly sentimental piano music. Perhaps the Tyranids will break down into sobs before they reach the Space Marine skirmish line.

 Snrub wrote:
So what do people think of the music? Suitable enough for the setting?


We're not gonna lose our gak over this one are we, like last time?

Rodeo Games, the studio behind the faithful of Games Workshop board game Warhammer Quest, is readying its first Unreal Engine 4 title. Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch launches on iOS devices this week.

Like Warhammer Quest and Rodeo’s successful original IP Hunters, Deathwatch is a turn-based strategy. Players will assemble a team of space marines by completing missions and equip them with wargear unlocked from card packs.

While that may hint at a free-to-play model, Rodeo prefers to release its games with premium pricing (up front cost). Purchase gives you access to all nine acts (approximately forty missions and fifteen hours of play).

Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch will be out Thursday, July 16.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Know what I'll be doing tomorrow, then! WQ was so good they've earned my purchase already.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Warhammer Quest is amazing. I'll check this out! It did take up about 1GB on my phone mind...

Aeneades wrote:
This has now been released (on the UK store at least). Costs £3.99 and has some form of IAP but not had a chance to see what they are (WQ had expansions, gold and characters as IAP so I suspect we will see similar here).

There’s a point, once you’ve made a highly successful Warhammer game, when the sweet shop of Games Workshop licenses opens up to you. After Warhammer Quest did “pretty damn well” for Rodeo Games, they returned to the Nottingham font of wargames to talk about what they might do next.

“They just sort of said to us, ‘You’ve pretty much got carte blanche here to do what you’d like,’” remembers Rodeo co-founder Ben Murch. “‘What is it you fancy?.’”

Rodeo toyed with the idea of dusting off Mighty Empires, the Total War-ish metagame for Warhammer Fantasy. They looked into an adaptation of 40K Epic, which would have been the first since the fantastic Final Liberation. And they played a few games of Necromunda, the neglected Hive City skirmish classic that regularly sets PCGamesN comment sections alight.


“We kind of fancy going back into sci-fi again,” they decided, and Games Workshop pointed them to a corner of the 40K archives that nobody else was touching. The Deathwatch are the military arm of the Ordo Xenos - the inquisitorial sect charged with the ultimate extermination of all alien species (which, yes, is also the role of everybody else in the Imperium - but presumably this lot take a macro approach to the problem). The Deathwatch induct veterans from several Space Marine chapters, lending them a mismatched wardrobe and a sense of seen-it-all ruggedness.

“It really spoke to all of us,” says Murch. “It’s this sort of Dirty Dozen in space adventure. Going behind enemy lines, being the best of the best, that sort of thing.”

We’ll pause, now, to allow readers a moment to weep openly at the idea of anybody passing up a Necromunda adaptation when they had the chance. It’s another blow, after Space Hulk devs Full Control were forced to close down before they had their shot. But you have to understand: Rodeo had just come off Warhammer Quest, which they’d translated with very little deviance from the board game.

“It was partly just down to us being a little bit nervous, really, about messing it up,” recalls Murch. “There was a lot riding on it. We announced that and the fans went a bit bonkers. We felt if we messed around with the ruleset at all, then it might have been quite a negative reaction.

“We should just do what we want to do, obviously, but in the heat of the moment you get a little bit clouded sometimes.”

That left very few holes in the design for Rodeo’s own ideas to breathe. With Deathwatch, by contrast, Games Workshop were prepared to ringfence a sector of space for the studio to build in or blow up as they saw fit.

“If we’re already using something like a license, then there’s obviously no wiggle room there,” explains Murch. “Space Marines look a certain way, Tyranids look a certain way - there’s no artistic interpretation of that. So really if you want to be creative on a project, making up the ruleset and the systems and the metagame that goes around it is where that chunk of work is.”

Rodeo have always blocked out their games with pen and paper first. They conceived the rules for Deathwatch that way, designating a developer as Game Master, and spent their afternoons playing with the design.

Over time, Deathwatch lost a cover system, gained grids - and Rodeo found that they were drawing less on the dice-driven ethos of Warhammer Quest and more on the turn-based squad setup of the Hunters games they’d made for iOS.

Asked what players have to think about when navigating a level, Murch talks about team composition: in the PC version, there’ll be nearly 50 different sorts of Deathwatch marines, pulled from six different chapters.

Load your assault marines up with grenades and chainswords and you can barrel into battle up-close. Or if you’d rather, you can hang back and fire from a huge distance with a gaggle of Devastators. Each mission begins with the question of who you’re going to bring with you - and the plan for finishing it emerges from that choice.

Rodeo’s first Deathwatch installment is subtitled Tyranid Invasion. Surely, when you’re dealing with genestealers in turn-based tactics, Space Hulk has to enter the conversation?

“Yeah, it really did,” laughs Murch. “You have to be careful not to tread on anyone else’s toes, really, when you’re doing this kind of stuff.”

As it turns out, a couple of levels set inside a crashed Imperial ship (“or a Hulk, if you will”) were scrapped due to the similarity. But beyond that, there’s no cause for confusion. Murch rightly points out that Space Hulk is about micromanagement, turning and moving your marines perhaps just a couple of squares each turn. Deathwatch is different: about scrolling over the battlefield to take a holistic view of the chaos, and devising your tactics accordingly.

The mention of a “PC version” raises a question. Here’s the answer: Rodeo develop for mobile platforms first. Warhammer Quest was brought to PC by a third-party while the studio worked on Deathwatch, making this their first proper PC port - but they’re clearly loving the process.
“I’ve just spent the last three months relighting the entire game using dynamic lights and things that actually cast real-time shadows, because you just can’t do that on iOS,” says Murch.

Unreal Engine 4 has accommodated with physically-based rendering for that all-important metallic 40K sheen, and a host of tools for upscaling.

“It’s amazing,” reckons Murch. “You just turn on a bunch of options and suddenly you’ve got ambient occlusion and lens flare and motion blur and all these things you get on really high-end PC titles. Within a few clicks you can make your game look really, really pretty, straight away.”

In truth, Deathwatch has always been a PC game on the quiet. That’s how it was played, throughout development, and the team planned ahead with high-poly character models. One day not long ago, Murch found himself spinning a marine around in the game’s armoury, where players compare stats and equipment.

“Bloody hell,” he thought. “This looks quite nice.”

Rodeo Games say they aren't dead, "taking a break" from new games but plan to bounce back

Update 16 Feb, 2016: Rodeo Games have informed us that they’re not shutting down, but are "currently taking a break from developing any titles".

In the meantime, the team will “continue to support [their] existing” games, in spite of comments to the contrary from an ex-staff member.

Our list of best strategy games stars the top tactical titles on PC today.

Despite ex-Rodeo staffer Matthew Spencer’s recent comments (featured below) that suggested his ex-employers are currently operating a bare bones team with "no one to offer support or make content", it seems Rodeo aren’t shutting up shop.

Deathwatch does appear to have cost the Guildford-based developer more than it managed to make in return - Rodeo are now in the position where they aren’t developing new games - however the studio intends to "carry on making the games [they] love" and plans for future releases will be made "at an appropriate time."

"As reported some of the team left the studio back in November, after we’d shipped the iOS and PC versions of Deathwatch," Rodeo told us via email. "Since then the core team have been working on new platforms for Deathwatch, one of which we’ll be announcing shortly!

"Despite Deathwatch being the best game we’ve created as a studio and our highest rated metacritic game, the changes in market have meant that we are unable to continue development as we’d initially planned. Coupled with some personal issues within the team, Rodeo Games are currently taking a break from developing any new titles. The team will continue to support our existing titles."

Beyond that, they issued some thanks to those who've helped them, and made it clear that this is not the end:

"We’d like to thank all our fans, especially those who have followed us since the beginning. We’d also like to say a huge thank you to the Games Workshop team who were kind enough to trust us with their IP and have supported us hugely over the last few years. Without them, we wouldn’t have enjoyed the commercial and critical success of the last 3 years.

"We'll announce our plans for future releases at the appropriate time. We intend to carry on making the games we love, for the people who love them."

Original Story 15 Feb, 2016: Rodeo Games, the studio behind the boardgame-now-videogame Warhammer Quest, have been forced to close their doors due to poor sales from their most recent title Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch. Although predominantly a mobile developer, both Quest and an enhanced edition of turn-based strategy game Deathwatch from Rodeo found home on Steam last year.

Rodeo were founded six years ago in mid-2010 by a collection of experienced developers once hailing from Criterion, Lionhead, Codemasters and EA.

As reported by Develop, former Rodeo employee Matthew Spencer spoke of the Guildford-based outfit’s fate via the Touch Arcade forums. He spoke in response to players’ queries about the lack of updates and bug fixes regarding Deathwatch.

“I and the majority of the team left four months ago, so [as far as I know] there's no one to offer support or make content,” said Spencer. “Like most indie developers, you're only as good as your last game, and even though Deathwatch was Rodeo’s highest metric game, it didn't make enough so we had to move on.”

Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch’s Steam variation - Enhanced Edition - currently holds a metascore of 74 on Metacritic, after launch in October last year.