Slipgate Ironworks has officially confirmed that the Veti, Tempest Rising's mysterious third faction, will receive a full 11-mission singleplayer campaign through a paid expansion called The Veti's Wrath, arriving later this year. A demo is live on Steam right now, giving players their first taste of the campaign before the full release.
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The faction that was always there but never playable
When Tempest Rising launched, it shipped with three factions fighting across a war-torn future Earth. The GDF and the Tempest Dynasty both had full singleplayer campaigns. The Veti had neither. They existed purely as a computer-controlled force, looming in the background as this ancient, unknowable threat. Slipgate had signaled for a while that the Veti would eventually become playable, and the studio spent time testing their multiplayer integration on a beta branch. The singleplayer question, though, stayed open.
Here's the thing: the answer turned out to be a paid expansion rather than a free content drop. That distinction matters for players who assumed the Veti campaign would arrive as a base game update.
What The Veti's Wrath actually includes
The expansion delivers 11 campaign missions, matching the length of both the GDF and Tempest Dynasty campaigns in the base game. Early missions are designed as a tutorial for the faction, easing players into mechanics that play nothing like the other two sides.
The Veti carry a distinctly Ancient Egyptian aesthetic, and their playstyle reflects it. Two core mechanics define how they operate:
- Conversion allows the Veti to turn fallen enemy soldiers into "enlightened," resurrecting the dead as a usable unit type.
- Sacrifice lets players spend those enlightened units as a resource to upgrade structures and unlock other benefits.
This is a genuinely different loop from the resource-gather-and-build rhythm of the GDF and Tempest Dynasty. The key here is that the Veti feel less like a conventional RTS faction and more like a puzzle to be solved across 11 missions.
Play the demo right now
The Tempest Rising demo currently includes the first 2 Veti missions alongside the opening 2 missions for both the GDF and the Tempest Dynasty. That gives returning players a direct comparison point and newcomers a solid cross-section of all three factions before committing to anything.
If you have not yet played Tempest Rising at all, this is a strong entry point. The game draws heavily from the classic Command & Conquer formula and is one of the few modern RTS titles that genuinely commits to singleplayer as a first-class experience rather than an afterthought. If you enjoy games like Riftstorm that reward strategic thinking and distinct playstyle variety, Tempest Rising is worth your time.
What this means for players going forward
The Veti's Wrath does not have a confirmed release date beyond "later this year." Pricing has not been announced. What is confirmed is that Slipgate is treating this as a proper expansion rather than a small content pack, with a campaign scope that matches what shipped in the base game at launch.
For RTS fans who bounced off the game because the Veti felt like an incomplete piece of the puzzle, the expansion directly addresses that gap. For players already deep in multiplayer, the Veti faction arrives in the base game at no additional cost, which is the right call.
The demo is available on Steam now. If you want a primer on how to approach complex faction mechanics before diving in, check out our gaming guides for strategy tips across a range of titles. The Veti's Wrath demo is as good a reason as any to find out whether this is the RTS you have been waiting for.
