Tsarist Space Struggle: The Mandate

There's a trailer for The Mandate below and today's challenge is for you to work out what genre the actual game will belong to when Perihelion Interactive release it. Don't run off to Google to find the solution, just peel back the lids of your eyes and watch the video. You might want to unclog your ears as well so that the stirring, solemn music can distract you with images of the might of Imperial Russia. Tsars in space, that's the theme, but how the devil does it play? Solve the mystery below.

It's almost definitely a 4X strategy game, with rebellious outposts that have splintered into new factions and must now be tamed. Yes, that's what it'll be.

Except the mention of a single, small ship, designed to go where a fleet cannot, suggests that strategy will be thrown out of the window. Instead, The Mandate may well be a spaceship exploration/combat sort of a thing. It might even have boarding actions, judging by the short snippet of what looks like turn-based tactical combat.

Let's read the press release and get to the heart of the matter:

The Mandate [is] a six player cooperative space RPG set in a world torn apart by 1500 years of war. From a newly formed development house featuring some of the creative minds from Funcom’s most popular MMO’s, and Ubisoft’ s original Assassins Creed, Perihelion Interactive collaborate to create a truly unique RPG experience with influences from some of the most tactically rich strategy and RPG titles of the past.

I certainly didn't expect the 'six player cooperative' part. It all sounds a bit like Mass Effect built for somebody who likes roguelike and tactical elements rather than third-person combat.

Fight, quest, trade, scavenge, and upgrade your way to victory!

In a unique turn for the genre, relationships between captain, crew, and officers will directly affect battle situations, and with rogue-like elements, officers trained over time can be lost – literally vented out through the side of your ship - which will suffer irreparable radioactive and other atmospheric cosmetic and detrimental effects

When there is no possibility of people being "vented out" of a spaceship, I question why games are set on spaceships in the first place. This all sounds rather good, even if the trailer is a bit of a mess.