2019 · Real-time strategy · Strategy

Beyond All Reason

Beyond All Reason is an open-source, community-driven real-time strategy game built for epic-scale warfare. Featuring a flow economy, fully simulated projectile physics, and massive battles with thousands of units on the battlefield, it pushes the boundaries of the RTS genre. With unmatched scale, intuitive quality-of-life features, and powerful unit control mechanics, BAR strikes the perfect balance between macro and micro-management, delivering a truly next-generation strategy experience.

Released: 15 December 2019
Platforms: Linux Windows
Genres: Real-time strategy Strategy
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Science fiction Warfare
Languages: English

About

Beyond All Reason is a free, open-source science fiction real-time strategy (RTS) video game currently in development, available for both Windows and Linux. Built on a fork of the SpringRTS Engine known as Recoil, Beyond All Reason draws heavy inspiration from older RTS titles like Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. Although still in its alpha stage, the game is fully playable and can be downloaded for free via the project's website.

In its current state, Beyond All Reason features single-player skirmish, scenario modes, multiplayer PvP, and co-op modes. The development team plans to release the game on platforms such as Steam once key milestones like campaign and matchmaking are achieved.

›Story

Cold and ruthless place

Our galaxy has been scarred by epic wars raging for millennia. It is a cold and ruthless place, where the remnants of Armada and Cortex factions still battle each other in an ancient struggle for domination. Most of planets resources have been depleted and turned into machines of destruction only to fight and get reduced into wreck fields that stretch to the horizon. These junkyards are a common sight among the once live and habitable planets. This is where our Scavengers story begins.

The Sardoth-11 event

No one knows for sure where did they come from, what made them alive and hungry for destruction. It might have been some alien technology, a random short circuit of a processing unit or a deliberate action of the mother nature to end the destructive war between Armada and Cortex. One thing is certain – some unknown event has influenced the AI algorithm of a group of Cortex bots left over on the planet called Sardoth-11 after one of the major battles between the two factions.

Protocol 1: Scavenge

Their original algorithm was tailored to realize a simple task of finishing the leftovers of Armada forces and setting an outpost on this planet. Yet for some reason they suddenly started doing something totally different – picking up the junk from the battlefield and using an advanced resurrection technology that utilizes tachyons (particles that travel back in time) to put the life back into those wrecks. All of this would end up being just an interesting little phenomenon for scholars of the future to analyze. But there was yet another fact that changed everything…

Protocol 2: Multiply

It turned out that the novel process of resurrecting had one more interesting aspect to it – every unit which got back to life by the Scavengers has been infected by a copy of the very same malicious algorithm that told them to scavenge the wreck fields and resurrect every single piece of junk to do the same over and over again. This unstoppable feedback loop has resulted in an exponential growth of their numbers, in just few days taking over the whole world of Sardoth-11.

Protocol 3: Upgrade

The scavenging algorithm had some flaws, as could be expected of a protocol that arose from seemingly spontaneous reasons. Sometimes it wasn’t able to rearrange the unit pieces in a correct way and used scraps from next wreck they could find. Sometimes the piece recognition module just bugged out creating frightening Frankenstein-like unit mashups. In some instances it resulted in totally useless abominations, but every now and then the chimeras turned out even stronger than the sum of their parts.

After almost all metal on the planet has been used there were still some leftovers that due to fragmentation or damage couldn’t be used to make operational units. However the scavenger protocol was very strict about metal – it had to use every single remaining scrap of it. The spare metal was used to put more armor and more weapons on original units, creating bigger and stronger versions of them. They were even able to build the frightening giant Commanders.

The outbreak

to be continued...

Keywords

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game offers the choice of three factions, Armada and Cortex as well as an experimental faction Legion. Armada focuses on speed and stealth tactics. Cortex focuses on brute force tactics. Legion units are typically weaker but multi-functional.

Each faction has its own set of robotic infantry (bots), vehicles, aircraft, and naval units. The game is played by starting with one unit, The Commander. Similarly to a king in chess, the first player who eliminates their opponent's Commander unit wins the game. Beyond All Reason features multiple game modes, including 1v1, team games of up to 8 players per side, horde modes against computer controlled opponents and single-player scenarios for offline play.

Development

Beyond All Reason has evolved over the years from a lineage of community-driven projects within the SpringRTS Engine. The engine, released under the open-source GPL license in April 2005, was designed to recreate the gameplay style of Total Annihilation, a classic RTS by Cavedog. This sparked the interest of developers and RTS enthusiasts, leading to the creation of numerous projects that expanded the SpringRTS community's portfolio of games. Among the notable titles developed within this engine was Absolute Annihilation, a game rooted in the UberHack mod for Total Annihilation. A later fork of Absolute Annihilation, called Balanced Annihilation, served as the gameplay foundation for Beyond All Reason.

Initially, Beyond All Reason began as an effort to replace all content tied to Total Annihilation's intellectual property and gradually developed into an entirely original game. The first artwork was showcased in 2010, and development continued sporadically until 2013, when the project lost momentum and was abandoned. In 2019, a new generation of developers, along with the original creators of Beyond All Reason, revived the project, bringing it into a playable state. Since then, Beyond All Reason has been in continuous development, improving aspects of the game and its infrastructure.

Reception

Beyond All Reason has been well received by both the community and in reviews. Reviews note the game's large amount of strategic depth, difficult learning curve, PVP gameplay, large-scale battles featuring hundreds of units, and its high level of polish.

PCMag summarized it as "the best RTS release in years." PC Gamer stated, "Beyond All Reason pushes boundaries with some utterly enormous community celebration brawls." German gaming news magazine GameStar praised it for "The biggest and most bombastic battles you've ever seen in an RTS". Over time, a sizable community has formed around the project. It gained widespread international recognition and earned 20th place in Rock Paper Shotgun's favorite strategy games of all time ranking.