Upcoming sci-fi strategy Drone Swarm has a new trailer introducing its story, and it’s directed by Michael Bay’s 451 Media Group. Drone Swarm developer stillalive studios’ previous projects are considerably less Michael Bay-like games, including Bus Simulator.

Michael Bay is of course best known as a Hollywood director, but he started branching out when he co-founded 451 Media Group in 2017. The company publishes comics designed to be adapted into other media, as well as comic adaptations of existing properties. It also produces flashy trailers for many of its releases, drawing on Bay’s extremely successful career directing movies.

The strategy game Drone Swarm will be getting the 451 Media treatment, receiving a comic book adaptation from the publisher that tells the story of the events leading up to the game. Before the release of the comics, 451 Media has already put its fingerprint on the project, directing a trailer introducing the game’s story. The trailer, released by publisher astragon, doesn’t show any actual gameplay from Drone Swarm, instead opting for a comic book style that makes a lot of sense given 451 Media’s other plans for the franchise. According to the trailer, Drone Swarm will take place in the 22nd century after a swarm of alien drones has made Earth uninhabitable. Somewhere along the line, psionics apparently became a thing, as the action of the game kicks off after 32,000 of them take control of the drone swarm and humanity builds a spaceship to find a new home.


While Drone Swarm’s trailer packs a lot of story into under two minutes, it may be the tag line at the end that’s most important. As the trailer says, players will “control thousands of drones” in Drone Swarm, commanding them to form into shields or attack enemy ships. Astragon has shared some clips of Drone Swarm’s gameplay in previous videos, which also show off a graphical style not unlike the comic book art seen in the story trailer, albeit in 3D and with all the humans replaced with thousands upon thousands of drones.

Transmedia projects that ask audiences to watch, play, and read several different types of content to get the full story have a spotty success rate, to say the least. Whether Drone Swarm will be able to pull it off, even with the backing of Michael Bay’s 451 Media, remains to be seen. From what’s been revealed so far, it does have a lot going for it, not least of all an interesting premise and some impressive tech powering its virtual drones.

Drone Swarm will be available on PC in fall 2020.