Arcen Games is a small video game company founded in 2009 by Chris McElligott Park. The company launched their first product, '' AI War: Fleet Command'', in mid 2009 for Windows PCs. The company became one of the early notable examples of heavy procedural generation in almost all their games. They are also known for taking unusual gameplay ideas in an idiosyncratic range of genres, and exploring to the extreme ends of each idea. Most of Arcen's titles include some form of overarching goals with a lot of freedom as to how the player goes about reaching said goals. The company founder has a stated aversion to being stuck into any one genre. Arcen Games is best known for its

real time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that does 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 pl ...

game '' AI War: Fleet Command'', which had six DLC expansions released between 2010 and 2014. Arcen released the puzzle game ''

Tidalis ''Tidalis'' is a tile-matching video game developed and published by Arcen Games. Reception ''Tidalis'' received mixed to positive reviews from critics upon release. On Metacritic, the game holds a score of 75/100 based on 5 reviews. Kristan R ...

'' in July 2010, 2D side scrolling game '' A Valley Without Wind'' in April 2012, its divergent sequel '' A Valley Without Wind 2'' in February 2013, environmental puzzle game '' Shattered Haven'' in March 2013, turn-based

god game A god game is an artificial life game that casts the player in the position of controlling the game on a large scale, as an entity with divine and supernatural powers, as a great leader, or with no specified character (as in ''Spore''), and pla ...

'' Skyward Collapse'' in May 2013 with an expansion called Nihon no Mura later that year, and tactical mech game '' Bionic Dues'' in October 2013. In April 2014, Arcen released '' The Last Federation'', a space-themed strategy/simulation game. This title did well enough to get two expansions by the end of 2015. ''The Last Federation'' put the company in a "relatively cash-rich position," after which a major project by the name of '' Stars Beyond Reach'' was undertaken. In October 2016, after an 18-month development cycle with the company's largest-yet team of staff and contractors, and with funds dwindling as long-term sales from other titles tapered, ''Stars Beyond Reach'' was put on indefinite hold. Arcen then rapidly developed and released the

shoot 'em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a Video game genre, subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain typ ...

roguelite Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most rogue ...

'' Starward Rogue'' for January 2016, but the title was a commercial failure that led to the layoff of all but three of their staff. In August 2016, they released and then pulled from sale a 3D dino-vs-robots game, '' In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor'' due to overwhelmingly poor sales. In January 2018, a mostly-independent group of former contractors dubbed the "Extended Team" finished their work on a "labor of love" expansion for Starward Rogue, which was also well-received without generating much income. After one failed kickstarter in late 2016, a followup successful kickstarter the next month, and then an extended period of early access starting in October 2018, Arcen Games released ''AI War 2'' in October 2019 to positive reviews. The first expansion for ''AI War 2'' was released in February 2020.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Video game companies of the United States Video game development companies Video game companies established in 2009