The critically acclaimed A.I. Wars video game series is making the leap from computer screens to the printed page. Arcen Games, LLC, has signed a licensing agreement with Forward Fiction, which will develop and launch a book series based on the real-time strategy games.
A.I. War (2009) and A.I. War 2 (2019) take place nearly two thousand years in the future, when the last surviving remnants of humanity live under the control of sentient war machines. As the commander of a growing armada of spaceships, the player must strategically dismantle and destroy the machines’ defenses without ever alerting the central A.I. to the threat of its own destruction.
“There’s a wonderfully intricate story within the game that you really only see glimpses of while playing, and it’s created an intense amount of interest among fans,” said Rick Lewis, president of Forward Fiction. “I’ve been blown away by the depth of storytelling that Arcen team put together over the past 13 years as they developed the two games and their many expansions.”
“It’s been an absolute blast working with Forward Fiction to finally lay out the full story in detail, which is something that just wouldn’t work within the game itself,” said Chris McElligott Park, founder of Arcen Games and lead developer of the A.I. War series. “Novels are really the only way to do the story justice.”
Forward Fiction plans to release a trilogy of novels that begins midway through the events depicted in the games and continues beyond the end of the war to explore the wider universe and the even larger threats that await humanity.
“When playing the game, you very quickly learn that the universe is a lot bigger than humanity’s war against the machines,” said Rick Lewis, president of Forward Fiction. “There’s so much going on behind the scenes that A.I. War stands out as the ideal property to expand into a book series.”
The complete A.I. War video game series includes:
- A.I. War
- A.I. War: The Zenith Remnant
- A.I. War: Children of Neinzul
- A.I. War: Light of the Spire
- A.I. War: Ancient Shadows
- A.I. War: Vengeance of the Machine
- A.I. War: Destroyer of Worlds
- A.I. War 2
- A.I. War 2: The Spire Rises
- A.I. War 2: Zenith Onslaught
- A.I. War 2: The Neinzul Abyss
All A.I. War games and expansions are available for sale on Steam, GOG, and Humble.
Arcen Games, LLC, is the independent video game development studio behind the A.I. War series, Tidalis, A Valley without Wind, Skyward Collapse, Bionic Dues, and The Last Federation, among others. For more information, visit ArcenGames.com.
Forward Fiction is a book publishing and marketing firm that specializes in developing novels from existing intellectual properties, including video games, films, and television shows. For more information, visit ForwardFiction.com.
