Teaser trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens have left fans speculating on events within the sci-fi universe since Return of the Jedi, based on less than four minutes of heavily edited footage.
Now they’ll be able to spend a few hours exploring the period in a mobile game, Star Wars: Uprising, released for Android and for iOS by publisher Kabam, a company with form when it comes to mobile games – and colon-infused titles – based on popular movie franchises.
The US firm’s previous releases include The Hobbit: Kingdoms, Lord of the Rings: Legends, Fast and Furious: Legacy and The Hunger Games: Panem Rising. The new Star Wars game is its most high-profile yet.
Star Wars: Uprising is set in between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, making it an official addition to the Star Wars canon. That is a significant moment for mobile gaming, which until recently has more often been a source of licensing dollars rather than new stories for the franchise.
The massively multiplayer game will let players create their own characters – “become the next Han Solo, Boba Fett or entirely unique hero of your own design” runs its blurb – and exploring familiar environments such as the planet Hoth, as well as new scenes.
Like Kabam’s other games, it is free but funded by in-app purchases of virtual items including tips for the Cantina Band or goods from Kashyyyk (both £3.99) and hazard pay for Stormtroopers (£14.99).
Uprising’s release a few months before the premiere of The Force Awakens is no coincidence: it is a key part of the advance promotion for the new film, with Kabam and Disney well aware that fans will flock to the game looking for more hints on the movie’s plotlines and characters.
“It’s extremely exciting. Being the first canon thing that was worked on at all post-Jedi was a huge opportunity,” the game’s director Daniel Erickson told VentureBeat earlier this month.
“The respect and sort of trust that it shows from Lucasfilm that hey, we’re going to let this come out as in a game format, says a lot about what we’re trying to do with it.”
Uprising may be new canon, but it is just one of a number of Star Wars mobile games released recently. It joins strategy game Star Wars: Commander; card-battling title Star Wars: Force Collection; tower-defence game Star Wars: Galactic Defense; RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old
There are also spin-offs including two Angry Birds Star Wars games, and several Lego Star Wars titles.
The new game is a big moment for Kabam, which reported $400m (£260m) of revenues in 2014 from its mix of movie and original brands, and raised a funding round of $120m that it claimed valued the company at $1bn.
It has been positioning itself as a creative partner – rather than simply a licensing partner – for film studios for several years now.
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