Age of Empires devs modernize the RTS genre with faster gameplay — and giant mechs

A few veteran developers are trading in their ancient empires for towering robots.

At this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, developer BonusXP unveiled Servo, a sci-fi mech game for PC that tweaks the real-time strategy (RTS) formula for modern tastes. Gone are battles that take 45 minutes or longer to complete — Servo matches last around 10 minutes. It places a huge emphasis on hero units called servos, customizable mechs that players use on the battlefield.