Developer/publisher Stardock's next major game is Elemental: War of Magic, their fantasy-themed title that combines RPG with the turn-based strategy game that you might expect in a Civilization game. At PAX 2009 this weekend. One of the big things Stardock CEO Brad Wardell mentioned at one of his presentations is that they are designing Elemental to run on close to any PC you can think of. "When the game comes out you will be able to play it on a netbook," he said at one point, "And I don't mean a good netbook. I mean a crappy netbook."
Wardell was trying to be a little funny with those remarks but in truth the game's design lends itself to running on a PC with low system requirements. One of the reasons is that you can switch from a full 3D map to a flat 2D overhead map and still play the game. Another reason is the game's illustrative art style that doesn't have to rely on high polygon counts for its characters and environments.
