BRILLIANT Skies, Scotland’s newest gaming studio, has sold more than 300,000 copies of its new game, From The Depths, weeks before its long-awaited debut.

The game allows players to build their ultimate war machine from a submarine to a spaceship, fighting epic battles on land, sea, air and space and has made more than £2.5 million from its pre-release alone.

From The Depths has been in development for a number of years and will have its first full release in late September.

It is expected to add Brilliant Skies to the growing list of successful gaming studios in Scotland.

The game boasts impressive longevity, with an average game time of around 63 hours of playing, which puts it well above the majority of games on the Steam platform.

Now the company is looking to build on Scotland’s rich history as a game developing nation by becoming the next big title to add to the Scottish list.

Brilliant Skies founder, Nick Smart, said: “Any game developer will tell you that creating, and coding needs to be a labour of love in order to get through the tens of thousands of hours spent building something like this, and ‘From The Depths’ was certainly no exception.

“I actually counted up a few weeks ago how many variations of the game we went through in order to perfect it for the full release - it was 826 versions.

“It is a highly detailed and creative game that is based on building and battling, these features of the game makes it difficult to compare with any others.

“It is a strategic game, and the feedback from players has been that they like the fact the game has such a long shelf life compared to others.”

He said the game had already established a huge online following with content and ideas generated by users constantly being fed into it – more than 15,000 vehicles have been created and shared online by players with over 600 different planetary environments built.

It already has more than 4000 reviews on Steam with an 88% positive score, placing it alongside blockbuster hits such as GTA and FIFA. The full release will further enhance its capabilities with bigger battles, stronger graphics and a faster frame rate.

“From The Depths is an engineering creative builder where you build a war machine using over 1000 different components and then fight to defeat your enemies,” added Smart.

“This game is really unlike any other on the market just now. The real-life physics and engineering aspects to this game make it hugely unique.

“Building a submarine in the game mirrors the processes of real life.

“The basic principles are transferable, so players are actually learning valuable skills whilst playing From The Depths.

“Because of this as well we have seen some like for like replicas of battles from history.

“People have built incredibly realistic versions of the Titanic, Second World War battleships and even 16th century Spanish Armada navy vessels.

“During the early access of the game we got 300,000 people buying and testing the game, so we have really perfected this over the last few years to make it the best game in its genre.”