[Update]: After two years in Early Access, Songs of Conquest will be launching on May 20th, 2024!

These past few weeks have been pretty good for fans of the classic Might and Magic games! Not only has Ubisoft announced they have a Might & Magic AAA project in development, but the heavily Heroes of Might and Magic inspired Songs of Conquest has now also been pinned for a May 10th, 2022 Steam Early Access launch.

As you might imagine given its inspiration, Songs of Conquest is a turn-based strategy that's all about exploring a giant map in search of treasure and resources, upgrading your home base in order to unlock new units and abilities, and then using said armies to engage in large-scale battles against your opponents. It's pretty much Heroes of Might and Magic 3 at its core, just with a couple of fun little twists to spice things up.

For example, instead of having a magic pool you can draw from in order to cast a barrage of spells, in Songs of Conquest you will need to fuel your spells with Essence that's gathered from your troops each turn. So not only will you need to construct armies based on their fighting capability, but if you want to use the most powerful spells you'll also need units with the right mix of Essences.

Combat is also slightly different as units have more active abilities you can play around with, while terrain features like high ground can help further boost your stats. And in a little feature borrowed from classic pen & paper RPGs, a unit moving out of melee range will trigger an attack from nearby foes, thus making positioning more important than ever.

But enough babbling from me, here's a brief trailer showcasing just what Songs of Conquest brings to the table. Have a peek:

While Songs of Conquest is likely going to stay in Early Access for about a year, the good news is that the initial version will be quite feature-rich as it'll bring with it two fully finished campaigns and all four playable factions. As far as future content is concerned, it looks like that will depend heavily on just what the players want to see.

For now, you can learn a bit more about Songs of Conquest and its Early Access plans over at Steam. Enjoy, and I'll make sure to let you know once it actually launches.