Cantata graduates from Early Access in August 2023

A ‘grand tactics’ title with striking visuals and crunchy mechanics

Marco Wutz | Jul 25, 2023

Cantata graduates from Early Access in August 2023 /

Does crunchy tactical gameplay and psychedelic artwork fit together? Cantata certainly makes a good case for it. Developer Afterschool Studio and publisher Modern Wolf have announced that it will graduate from Early Access on August 15, 2023, with the release of version 1.0. Dubbed the first ‘grand tactics’ game, Cantata is set on an alien planet that’s become the battlefield between three unique factions. Players can take control of each of these civilizations over the course of the game’s single-player campaign.

Cantata takes classic elements from the grand strategy, tactical combat, and real-time strategy genres and throws some exploration in there for good measure to create something unique – a striking visual style reminiscent of classic strategy games reinforces this feeling further.

Taking a page out of Dune, the planet Shoal players are fighting over isn’t just a static battlefield: It reacts to the devastation wrought by the warring factions and gets its own turn during a match, which it uses to unleash its flora, fauna, weather, and more to rid itself of the pesky parasites on its surface.

Cantata comes with a full single-player campaign featuring all three factions, a multiplayer mode that supports local and online play, and a fully functional map editor to create new scenarios and maps from scratch.

You can check out the newly published release date announcement trailer below for some impressions:

Released into Early Access on Steam on May 12, 2022, Cantata has garnered a ‘very positive’ response so far – a trend the full release version hopes to continue.

Published Jul 25, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg