One of StarCraft II's most prolific professional commentators, Sean 'Day[9]' Plott is translating his deep understanding of Blizzard's seminal series into a brand new "hardcore RTS" as lead designer. It's a testbed game for new HTML 5-based browser gaming platform Artillery.

"We are thrilled to be creating the future of RTS gaming," Plott said in yesterday's announcement. "Project Atlas is designed specifically as an accessible, multiplayer experience -- players click a link, and a few seconds later they are all playing together."

The codenamed Project Atlas is something of a mystery for now, though Plott explained a little of his broad goals in a thread on Reddit:

We're wanting to make the most fun ass, easy to pick up multiplayer experience ever (inspired much by Magic the Gathering and TF2). If it becomes an eSport, great! If not, we won't force it. We trust the communities desires in these regards. If there IS interest for it to be an eSport, bet your butt I'm ready to go all-in.

Project Atlas is due to enter open beta this winter. You can sign up on the official site.

Using WebGL and JavaScript, the Artillery platform is intended to support low-latency multiplayer games with short loading times and proper fancy graphics. It'll open up to developers next year, after the beta launch of Project Atlas. Here's a peek at the platform: