Total War Franchise Moves to Handhelds and Mobiles with Battles Spin-Off

Video game publisher SEGA and developer The Creative Assembly have announced that they are working on a new spin-off for the Total War franchise, called Battles, which is specifically designed to appeal to gamers who play on mobiles and handhelds.

Total War Battles will be created using the Unity game engine, which is seen as a good way of creating experiences for mobile gaming devices without sacrificing the quality that a PC audience is used to get.

Rob Bartholomew, who is the brand director at developer The Creative Assembly, stated, “Total War Battles is a distinct new direction. For the last 12 months our Digital team has been extensively prototyping technology and making sense of exactly what a Total War game on mobile would look and feel like.”

Renaud Charpentier, the lead designer on the new Total War Digital team, added, “This isn’t the traditional Total War you might expect. We are working on a title that is specifically tailored to the play styles and control methods of mobile platforms.

“We want to deliver a game that plays to the strengths of handheld RTS mechanics, and perfectly adapts to a host of different platforms. We’re developing in Unity to help us achieve stunning visuals, gameplay and audio on all our target devices.”

At the moment The Creative Assembly and SEGA are not prepared to talk about specific platforms on which Total War battles will be launched or about details linked to the game experience.

The Total War strategy series, which mixes real-time and turn-based elements, is set to get the Fall of the Samurai expansion for Shogun 2 in late March.

It will allow players to experience war in Japan during the XIX century, when the influence of the West was becoming clear both in the politics and in the warfare style of the country.