Elemental Screenshots: Cloth Maps and All Caps

While the art style for Stardock's Elemental: War of Magic is pretty snazzy, screenshots are really only showing half of the story. During a live demonstration at PAX, the other half became immediately apparent: it's all about the zoom.

Elemental is like a cross between Civilization and Might and Magic. You're in charge of macro-managing large networks of cities and supplying them with resources, but also micromanaging individual avatars and armies.

When zoomed all the way in, the game looks like the above left shot; when scroll-wheeled back, the art style transitions to the clothy look of the right shot. Most importantly, it pulls off this transition so smoothly that I was left a bit awestruck--the engine has been much improved since this early May footage.

There's a lot more to Elemental, of course; the city management, avatar breeding, and impressive modding capabilities are all worth words. As such, we'll have more on the game in the coming days, including a lengthy interview with Stardock's Brad Wardell.