Nuclear Dawn is a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter

First-person shooter

First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...

 real-time strategy

Real-time strategy

Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

 hybrid video game. It was originally announced in February 2006 as an amateur mod

Mod (computer gaming)

Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...

 for the Source engine, but in April 2009 was revealed to have become a commercial project, still using Source, aimed at Windows PCs, Mac OS X and the Xbox 360

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...

. It was released on September 26, 2011.

Nuclear Dawn joins Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe...

, Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat is a team-based multiplayer World War II first-person shooter video game of the European Theatre of World War II. As of 2008, the game is one of the ten most played Half-Life modifications in terms of players, according to GameSpy....

, Natural Selection, The Ship, They Hunger: Lost Souls and Garry's Mod

Garry's Mod

Garry's Mod is a sandbox physics game using the Source engine. Garry's Mod has been available on Steam's content delivery service since November 29, 2006...

as former mods of Valve products that have become commercial projects.

Gameplay

One player on each team is a 'commander', who directs his or her team from an overhead view. The remainder are soldiers who have standard FPS player capabilities. Drivable vehicles were originally planned, but decided to leave vehicles out of the initial release of Nuclear Dawn.

The comparative roles of soldiers and commanders are described by InterWave as being:

Development

Nuclear Dawn suffered a protracted development cycle as a mod, leading to criticism that it was vaporware

Vaporware

Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially canceled. Vaporware is also a term sometimes used to describe events that are announced or predicted,...

.

When Nuclear Dawn's move to a commercial product was announced, InterWave's managing director, Michiel Beenen, said:

Reviews

Reviews have been predominantly positive since release, with a Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 rating of 71.

See also

• Natural Selection (An RTS/FPS hybrid mod for Half-Life.)
• Empires Mod (An RTS/FPS hybrid mod for Half-Life 2.)

External links

• Official homepage
• Steam Community Official Game Group
• Announcement of Nuclear Dawn's move to a commercial product
• InterWave Studios