Studio behind Rust and Garry's Mod announces new arena strategy game

Surprise! There's a new title by Facepunch in the pipeline - and this one looks very different to Rust and Garry's Mod.

Breaking from sandbox and survival games, Facepunch is now venturing into the world of strategy games with Clatter: a cartoony "arena tactics game" featuring bouncing robots and cubes with moustaches. Players can command "customisable squads of fighting robots" in either multiplayer or solo matches, although the game has apparently been designed with the latter in mind. The robots each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and with names like "Grabbers", "Flippers" and "Mortars", it's pretty easy to guess what they do.

According to the press release, there are two main match modes - deathmatch and control - which can be played on an "ever-changing roster of maps". There's also a career mode which requires players to build their team across a season's worth of matches. Like if you combined Football Manager with Wall-E.

Clatter is due to release on Steam fairly soon - sometime in December, in fact - and although the project isn't on the same scale as Rust, it could be a cutesy time-killer for those weird days in-between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Seriously, I never know what to do with myself in that week. Maybe this time I'll spend it flipping robots.