Tempest Rising Preview

Command & Conquer is a game that gives many infinite bouts of nostalgia, and as a fan myself, the games have always had a soft touch on me. The series itself hasn’t seen anything for years; even the well-received Remastered Collection was five years ago. Ignoring the horrible idea that was the mobile game, there hasn’t really been a similar game for a while now. RTS is a beloved genre, but overall, there has been a lack of good real-time strategy games.

Now enter Tempest Rising, a light in the dark. The RTS looked very lovely when it popped and promised to be “inspired by the RTSs of the 90s and 2000s.” In truth, it was practically meant to be a successor to C&C. However, for the longest time, there was little news on it. Yet, in the first weeks of January, we had more than some stellar news. The game was to be released on the 24th of April 2025.

It came with it the news of a multiplayer demo, and well, once I found out we were going to get our hands on it, I was unfathomably excited. For those still in the dark, Tempest Rising is a classic RTS that has everything you’d want in a modern adaption to the genre. 

Tempest Rising depicts Earth after a global nuclear war, leading to the rise of two very distinct factions. These factions now fight over some very fancy resources called Tempest, which also serves as the main resource for the game. There are some words for a third faction, but we don’t know anything about that yet.

Before the game even begins, the tone sets in. The music so far has been killer, with tracks that were incredibly reminiscent of C&C. This bodes well for actual gameplay, too—moving onto the meat of the content. The demo sets you up in skirmish mode, and naturally, I played around with both factions on all the maps.

To start things off, you can change a few parameters, such as your starting army and credits. The default seems to be to have the construction yards- your main base only- and with 6000 credits. Once a match starts, you will quickly notice things look sharper than any previous looks, and overall, the game looks amazing.

Now, each faction has its playstyle, different philosophies, and gameplay. For myself, I had started with the GDF. The GDF looks to be a faction focused on the more traditional characteristics of old-school RTSs. You start with the ability to see your minimap, and you also have access to a special resource called intel. Intel is something you slowly generate but also get by killing enemies. You will need it often, with uses ranging from certain units and building upgrades to the use of special abilities and more.

Aside from that, I also had the two general resources in population and credits. Glossing overpopulation for a bit since it’s basically self-explanatory, giving you a hard limit to how many units you can have running around; credits are something you earn by harvesting tempest from the various red-looking tempest nodes around the map. The nodes that I started with eventually ran out; however, there were deposits over the map that I usually had to contest control over.

The credits worked interestingly, though, in that there are virtually very few upfront payments in Tempest Rising. Instead, as your construction yard builds a building or a unit is being trained, your credits will gradually tick down. This makes things very intuitive in practice as you can queue up many things without really caring for how many credits you have currently, as you’ll be sure you can harvest them eventually.

However, this also means that mismanagement can lead to moments where you have zero credits and are waiting for your harvester to drop off resources. This balance between production and harvesting is one of the main aspects of the early game. Speaking of which, another resource you sort of have to deal with is power. You’ll want to keep ample amounts of power plants up to have sufficient power, as virtually all your buildings will need it.

When starting, I had to build a power plant, which unlocked the refinery and the barracks. I put down an order for the barracks and refinery and looked around the map, marking out where I’d send scouts to hold. By the time the barracks and refinery were done, I placed another power plant as I wanted to focus on other things. 

The GDF’s refinery comes with a free harvester, so despite the high cost, I felt incentivized to build a second one near another deposit of Tempest. I should note that there is a build area that is limited to being around your existing buildings. So, I spaced things out since I wanted to reach the chokepoints for building defenses.

The GDF barracks start with three units, each with its utility. The scouts have a long-range vision. The Drone operator can effectively deal with light vehicles and buildings. The engineer repairs vehicles, deploys towers, and can capture neutral and enemy buildings.

With a few scouts, I made sure the enemy couldn’t rush me and focused on maximizing my production. This meant building the Vehicle Bay, which aptly had a bunch of vehicles to produce. At the same time, I had issued a Satellite Uplink to be built. This building slowly generates intel over time and can issue upgrades to the Barracks. It also, importantly, unlocks a bunch of units and enables the use of Radar.

I also started to assemble a small mobile force of two tanks and two scout cars. This seemed to be one of the main combos for the GDF. The Hunter Tank has bonus range and damage against marked targets, and the Sentinel scout car can mark enemy units. In the early game, you’ll probably rely on them as you can’t really spam out any units.

Aside from that, having two or three of the Field Scouts felt important, as I didn’t want to be countered hard. At this point, I started to run out of resources, so I slowed down, placed two more refineries, and got myself another harvester.

The next few minutes went by, and I faced off against small skirmish units of the enemy. This gave me enough intel to get myself a Data Core. The Data Core not only unlocked the elite tier of units but also generated some intel. At this point, the music really picked up, and I began to wonder.

With a bit of digging, I found out, unsurprisingly, that the renowned composer Frank Klepacki is a part of the team that created the music. Every track gets your blood pumped, and the aggressive music does so much to drive and push the gameplay. The tracks overall have a star-studded cast of composers, including the likes of Michael Markie, Hexenkraft, Adam Skorupa, who was responsible for much of the music of The Witcher, and Sigurd Jøhnk-Jensen.

Tempest Rising naturally cascaded into big battles involving a lot of units. The AI was pretty intelligent, trying to attack me from different avenues. However, having forward scouting elements paid off, as I always saw them coming.

I was so hooked on the fight that I almost glossed over the Doctrines. Doctrines are basically the techs that you’ll have in the battle. They cost some amounts but always give very useful buffs. They are split into three sets for three different playstyles; each faction has 18 doctrines in total. Multiplayer has this traditional tech tree-like doctrine, while the campaign will get a global upgrade tree along with the doctrine.

Having a large reserve of intel, since I mostly relied on general troops, I used a lot at once to spam many heavy units. Paired with air strikes and constant pushes, as well as some cheeky incursions to try and take out the enemy power, I managed to edge out and win.

As stated before, I played quite a few matches to really get a feel of things and figure out the playstyles. I found that the GDF really liked to play into the combined arms of things but also had a wide variety of versatile units to pick from. My favorite strategy was giving the Comms Rig a build area using the center doctrine and building Tempest Artillery Platforms as I pushed. These defensive structures suddenly became heralds of death for the enemy as my front ranks held them off while the artillery did its job. 

However, this strategy didn’t really work out in the multiplayer when the developers were kind enough to provide a window for that. Naturally, the multiplayer felt more fun since people are always more reactive than AI.

The maps themselves are extremely well made, too. It’s large and expansive but not to the point of being overwhelming. You have many chokepoints and sections that provide a natural defense against your opponent. The map is mostly symmetrical, so you will also have a hard time moving your way through the enemy defenses. Currently, there are three maps that take place in three different places on the globe. 

Two of these were revealed previously, and one came new with the demo, but let’s go over all of them anyway. Overgrown Oasis is a map set in Egypt, so the color is very different from the other two. It is also more open, with fewer chokepoints and only six main resource deposits. Altitude and the Alps are the other two, the first set in mountainous Slovakia and the other in the Austrian Alps. 

They are very similar in that they are very vertical, with lots of ups and downs. The Alps is the largest map, meant for four players, and it resembles King of the Hill maps and game modes in older games like Age of Empires II.

 I’d also like to comment on how well most of the models and animations are done. My personal favorite is the Tempest Empire’s collection vehicle, the Tempest Rig, whose wheels turn into little harvesters, and the chassis becomes the storage/collection center.

The overall gameplay of Tempest Rising is incredible and has a lot of depth, and you definitely have a lot of strategic gameplay. The two factions are very well made, with some very interesting design choices that really make them a blast to play. However, there are a few factors to be polished, as this is still a demo almost four months before the release. Things that could be added include formations and ordered movement, as well as being able to mark where units need to move on the minimap.

These small nitpicks aside, this is definitely one of the games I am looking forward to. It creates a fantastic mix of pretty much everything you’d want in a modern rendition of the 90s RTS magic and looks to become a hallmark of the real-time strategy genre. Tempest Rising will be released on the 24th of April, 2025. You can also check out the multiplayer demo, which is live right now until the 3rd of February.