Ubisoft's Blue Byte has laid The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria to rest, replacing it with a new title, Champions of Anteria.

After the former's open beta run in January last year, the developers explained that they considered all the feedback they received, as well as the company's future plans for the project, which pushed them to go in a different direction.

"We made the decision to steer this project in a new direction, meaning The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria as you know it no longer exists," the Blue Byte team wrote, adding that they are hard at work creating a new game based on the initial idea.

This game is what the developers revealed recently as Champions of Anteria, a real-time strategy (RTS) game that isn't part of The Settlers series, but a new adventure game that explores new areas from the world of Anteria.

"The story follows the five Champions as they come back to Anteria, their homeland, and find it in ruins. They find it at the mercy of three warring factions, and the whole story is how the Champions can help the common people and liberate the land for them," Mihnea Dragoman, the game's creative director, told Ubisoft.

The new title features action-packed RTS mechanics, allowing players to pick three heroes out of five available characters. These heroes have their unique elemental affinities, mainly lightning, fire, nature, water and metal.

Picking is no easy task, however, as players have to consider the challenges that await them in each scenario.

In these challenges, enemies have their own assigned elements and players have to weigh the pros and cons of their chosen hero composition as elements work in an "extended rock-papers-scissors" kind of way - an element trumps another, as that other element trumps another one and so on.

The heroes' elemental affinities also feature "symbiosis" wherein particular skills can work well with other skills. Basically, gameplay involves predetermined courses of action as players have to be mindful of the skill set they bring into battle against elementally aligned foes.

An action-pause command has been added by Blue Byte to let players stop and think during battle scenarios just in case they are blindsided by surprises. Players can pause the game to either change their strategy or devise plans along as the story unfolds.

A "home base management system" allows players to craft items and upgrade abilities for their heroes. Certain parts of the castle base are unlocked as players progress through the story, allowing more content and animations like additional settlers and movement, among others.

Champions of Anteria will be released for PC on Aug. 30 via digital downloads.

Readers may visit the game's official site for more details and its announcement trailer can be viewed below:

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