Recent reviews by Ruinae Retroque Rursus

WH3:TW is a game built on WH2:TW, which was build on WH:TW. However, as time has gone on, QA standards have slipped, power creep has grown, individual armies and abilities become stronger, and the executive mismanagement shown their cracks more clearly (eg: siege rework, which did nothing to help the problems with sieges).

Settlements at this point are nothing more than moneymaking points for the enemy to snatch away from you, as recruitment is now done more and more by mechanics (eg: LM Blessed Spawning requires no time, recruitment cost, or recruitment buildings). Lords and lord abilities become stronger, reducing battle tactics into a question of who stacked enough +melee defense on their doomunit.

In essence, while WH1 was a strategy game, and WH2 was a strategy game, WH3 is an arcade beat'em'up where you romp around with your doomstack killing everything.

Now, this isn't neccessarily a bad thing, and the game genuinely is quite fun. But I *have* to give this a negative review due to my moral concern over the company's direction. This article, by a former developer at the company, ( https://medium.com/@julianmckinlay/total-war-rome-ii-and-creative-assembly-my-statement-ten-years-on-d964f65b0a8f ) is the basis for a lot of my concerns.

WH3 is a good game. But it could have been an outstandingly great game. But weird executive oversight: a classic case of mismanagement: means devs have to put their time into meaningless features like four types of new defensive towers, instead of actually fixing the core problems with the game (eg: generally weak AI, sieges are tedious, smaller armies run amok, replenishment makes casualties meaningless as long as you win, provinces have never been a liked mechanic due to several flaws, hero actions are BS, and so on).

This is clearly shown with the latest 3 DLC, Tides of Torment, in which all the features are half-baked, don't work in the context of an empire-building strategy game, and quite broken (we've had TWO hotfixes since launch with more on the horizon).

Again, a great game that genuinely is value for money due to the sheer amount of content in it thanks to the series' ten-year history, but it's inconsistent with my morals to be able to give this a positive review. Fire all the higher-ups (joke's on me, they're the last people who will take a pay cut over the developers) and I'd change my tune.

Gato Roboto is a good game.
In a game market seemingly awash with endless platformers, each one needs something to make them unique and worth playing over the literally other thousands out there. Gato Roboto’s distinction is its quality.
Like when you get out the mech suit, the cat hops out onto the arm. The flashing radar on the submarine that shows enemies. The sound design on enemies (especially being hit). The sound design on your character.

More on gameplay, one very good thing about Gato Roboto is its level design. It introduced enemies sensibly with dedicated rooms, never overwhelmed you, made every room feel unique, and the areas required usage of all sorts of fun stuff (eg: ventilation is basically cat-only, aqueducts is mostly submarine-only, other areas are mech-only). Despite that, you never feel bored or restricted.

Also, bonus props for no “hidden breakable wall” shenanigans – you know, every other game seems to have bomable or breakable walls that otherwise look almost identical? It’s nice to not be paranoid about those.

However, like other games, the game’s mechanics and what makes it special can fight it. Due to its monochrome palette the final boss is very difficult to fight: it mostly comes down to you out-damaging him, as you can’t tell which projectiles are yours and which are his, and, in bad cases, even where he is. Another example is that enemies are obviously white on white terrain, which can just be annoying.

Also, it took me about 20min to work out that you can drop through platforms via Down+Jump. That's never explained in-game.

Drawbacks:

The game is short for its price. It took me 4h to complete the game, and these sorts of games have extremely low replay value (the major reason I’m replaying it at all is achievement hunting – the achievements are well done, neither infuriating nor a joke). I currently have 8h and wouldn’t expect to finish up with more than 15h. For a $10 (NZD) game, that’s relatively expensive (compare Terraria, $15, Warhammer 2 Total War, $100 (but 800+ hours) – or if you want something in the same genre, Out There Somewhere, $2, 15 hours).
However, the game couldn’t easily be extended. The two-colour palette begins to show its flaws as the game gets more complex (case in point: spikes) and is really bad for the final boss. Also, games like this that require items for gameplay progressions can get out of hand if not done properly.

Also, it’s my opinion that games overall are too cheap and don’t accurately reflect the costs going into them. Even so, I would still tentatively call it overpriced by a slight bit – but then again, Steam sales exist, and at $6 I’d definitely get it. (Which I got for free! You know exactly who you are, and thank you again <3). It’s perhaps not the most value-for-money game, but if you’re just playing games to get value for money you should really think about playing them for this thing called “fun.”

I genuinely can't say anything good about this game. But at the same time, I can't say anything bad about this game.

It's not bad! It's just not very good, with nothing outstanding - but I did only play a careful 23min so don't take my word for it.

But some platformers - like Freedom Planet, or something more in this price range, Out There Somewhere, show their quality and prove that they're worth playing within the first five, ten minutes. I just didn't get that vibe from Spaceport Hope.


It's times like this that I wish Steam had a "Meh" option. I kinda feel bad for leaving a negative review, but less bad than I feel for no review at all.

This game is quite poor, because its lack of varied threats means the levels soon become a "Dodge mines placed in this place! Now dodge mines based in THIS place! Now dodge a truckload of mines whilst being shot at!" I don't have very good screenshots, but this is what you can start to expect:
https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=784453748
and this has moving wheels of death on moving platforms, but does not have homing attacks too (those come later in the stage.... agh, this was painful to play)

It has its ups - five characters, each unique (one can dash, one can slow time, one jumps super-high, and I can't remember the last two) and every level is playable with each one - but this isn't enough to offset the poor level design. This isn't helped by the game design: frequent checkpoints but one hit sends you back. This means you can't use invincibility frames and take some HP damage to get through tough sections - no, you have to work out how to do them. And then you have to work out how to do the next section. Aaaand the next.

And then! You have to replay them to collect the collectibles. Most platformer have a principle of 'one level unlocks the next,' and most platformers also have bonus collectibles that usually unlock little of note. However, this game's progression is based on how many collectibles you've collected (=> in-universe, critters you've saved, but this game has next to no plot so don't expect anything). On the plus side, this means if a group of levels takes your fancy you can pick up all the (quite hard to get...) collectibles and skip some levels you dislike. On the negative side, if you're struggling with the game, it just becomes unfriendly to play. I genuinely would have completed it if it weren't for the collectibles... but aaargh. :/ This unlocking scheme could work, but it didn't.

Oh, and the game focuses on you basically jumping in and around moving timed platforms to avoid moving timed attacks - you have no attacks or anything. This is fine, but I thought I'd mention it. This works, if everything else is polished enough (there's a lengthy section in Out There Somewhere that occurs before you get a weapon) - but this isn't polished and isn't fun.

I would write more but this game really isn't worth my effort. I haven't finished it (got about 80% through), but have no intention of ever completing the remaining 20%.

I will say one thing - it is cheap. But if you want a cheap, good, platformer, check out Out There Somewhere, which is just better in every respect. Like, literally every way. I can highly reccomend that game for its fun level design, interesting puzzles, and it's just absolutely better. https://store.steampowered.com/app/263980/Out_There_Somewhere/
I also wrote a review on that, if you're interested: https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/id/aidenpons/recommended/263980 Go play that game instead, not this one.

Grapple Force Rena is a lovely platforming game. :D It's just my style. Quirky, humorous, and 0% dark, it's lovely. :D

The game revolves around using a 'grapple' to swing around, grab things, throw things at other things, and generally 'do stuff.' Despite this, the game never feels stale due to some EXCELLENT level design. You've learnt how to swing? Now have a crazy pinball level. Now grab bots out of carts and hoon around. Now grab things from the ceiling to yank them down to do stuff with. Now toss this AI character around who can't jump to get him back to his ship safely! Even in levels the game has interesting things:
https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1792326873

The controls are very good. It's designed for keyboard and mouse, but playable with a controller or just keyboard. While at times it felt a little clunky, I felt that this was more the fault of myself not playing properly than the game - although things that could definitely be improved are grappling onto thin ledges (generally a bit strange, and you have to aim at the right 10-pixel area to be able to hop up), and the swinging things seen in a couple of the stages (very hard to tell where you'll end up). The other stuff is great though. :D

One thing sets Grapple Force Rena apart from a lot of other games, and that is every attack has delays to it.
For your attacks as the first character - well you don't, you have to pick up something, which you can throw to attack.
As the second character, your magic attacks require charge time, and even your sword slash has a wind up time.
This isn't infuriating at all - it's very nice and well-animated, but it's just a little different from standard fare of 'click to attack.'
This also includes the enemies and bosses. The basic enemy - and in fact all enemies - has a little wind-up before they'll actually damage you (no contact damage in this game, even against bosses). Particular mention must go to the final boss, who 'previews' her attacks.


The game is very friendly - there's no lives, you just end up at the previous checkpoint. Should you be struggling there's a "Regenerate health" and "Unlimited health" mode, both of which I'm kinda surprised to exist. :P Despite this, it's still not easy and provides a fun challenge - the accent on fun, not challenge.

The dialogue is amazing. XD The characters are well-written and funny. There's no voice acting, which is fine - the text is colourful, with wavy bits for emphasis, so it's not lacking in meaning.
https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1792329201
https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1783511295

The music's very good. Not quite 'fantastic,' (that's Freedom Planet :D) but definitely better than 'good.' One thing it does well is have a lot of music - character themes, character boss themes, multiple stage themes, and so on. You can find cassettes throughout the levels, which you can then put into the in-game Music Player. There doesn't seem to be a way to translate this into files you can put into VLC or something, though.

The bosses, an integral part of any platformer, are very well-made. They're in fitting with the difficulty of the rest of the game (which admittedly makes them a little easy - although there is no healing during boss fights). They're great fun to watch, fit in the plot well, and you get an immense feeling of satisfaction when you work out how to dodge their attacks and damage them :D

Oh, and the game's progatonist is female (I think?), and the second playable character is too, as well as the final boss and a couple of other charactersT. he game is lovely, in that it doesn't force this on you - some games can be obnoxiously feminine, which is just a pain. Nice to see a variety of genders in-game. (The Big Bad, who is actually not the final boss, is of course male. That trope still remains :P)

My one complaint would be that the game is rather short. There are six stages, each with five levels, and a boss rush mode. These levels are nearly all well-made, and they're very fun - but is quite short, and the levels can be quite linear.

I felt the design of the last few stages dropped off a little - the terrain was less colourful and varied, often you could just mindlessly swing your way through past everything. In particular the obligatory "This level is a summary of all the previous levels" felt very boring, consisting of mostly just swinging through shorter versions of the puzzles you'd seen before. Despite that, the other levels were great fun, and the final boss made up for any shortcomings in this level.

The game also throws in a second playable character for a couple of stages, which is a) confusing as heck because it plays TOTALLY differently and b) an absolute blast to play. It's a shame she's only playable in two levels. :( Sequel pls? :P
https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1792327506

It's definitely a short platformer, and doesn't have the longevity that my favorite platformer, Freedom Planet, has - but then again, that game got flak for its levels being too long. :P And I suppose adding more levels for Rena might drag on a bit - but then again, the levels save the last were great fun. It's taken me 5hrs to beat it, which is a far cry off the 60 for Freedom Planet.
I'll definitely be replaying it though!

I've always thought a lot games are a bit cheap, buying hundreds of hours of work for a few dollars, and this game is what I'd consider a 'normal' price for a game, and as such for its content it is a little expensive relative to other games. However at 50% off (as it is on the sale right now, and presumably later sales) it's fantastic and I'd highly reccomend it.


Also.... the plot touched me on a very personal note at the end - in such a oddly specific manner that other games like Celeste can't match. Just a little strange, and certainly unexpected.

Oh, and one last thing: Achievements and screenshots aside (no trading cards), you may as well get the https://galaxytrail.itch.io/grapple-force-rena variant, which is DRM-free. But having stuff on Steam is nice too.


Very lastly, there's a demo out on the Store page, so give it a whirl!

Eh.

This game is very definitely cool. Unfortunately the strategy is extremely shallow. It mostly comes down to Flank-2-Win. Your spearmen, who are supposed to be countered by Shieldbreakers, can easily win if one unit of spears pins them down and the other unit charges into their rear.

Instead of units withdrawing from combat by a right-click order to move elsewhere, you have to use the Withdraw flag, which makes them run away for quite some distance depending on their leadership. This is quite frankly a bit of a pain given the game comes down to Flank-2-Win and if you only got a side charge, not a rear charge, there's no way to pull them out to charge again.
Also annoyingly when troops reach 0 morale they don't withdraw immediately, which makes the morale mechanic mostly useless.

The rest of the strategy is very interesting, Traps, stances, abilities, hiding, a reasonably well thought out countering system, fire damage to buildings, weather... but the Flank-2-Win aspect just outweighs all of this, and because you can't easily pull troops out to flank again once you've commited you're in for a grind.


But the nail in the coffin is the unit limit of 10. That's.... not....
.... well you could argue it's integral to how the game plays as it is micro-heavy flanking manouvers... but then... saying a terrible mechanic is integral to how the game plays....

Why is the pop limit so bad? Because it's an RTS and because the pop limit is absurdly low. 10 units means you have 10 offensive units and 0 units back at base, defending, on garrison, scouting, patrolling, doing all the other things that make RTSes what they are. It'd be okay if it was 20 as then you could spare a couple for bonus tasks; but 10 units just isn't enough.... but yet, more than 10 would be downright impossible to micromanage as you need so much flanking...

I'd like to say the game has potential. Nerfing flanking would definitely be a good start. Yet it's just lacking in so many other areas... no control of tower placement... economy management is nonexistent... upgrading to the next tier feels just so neccessary there's no point in delaying it for a tactical advantage... archers are quite powerful... unit variety is nonexistent.... several mechanics like hiding are useless... total lack of fortifications...


The campaigns and tutorial are very well done! Unfortunately... the tutorial doesn't make a game. :/



Why is this review so short? I haven't played it fully; it was in a Free Weekend and I thought I'd give it a go. But I don't feel like playing it for any more of the weekend, and hence can't write walls of text on the game mechanics.

Give this game an award!

Not because it has deep and engaging gameplay.

Give it an award because it is the shallowest game I've ever seen.

So, you are a trader who buys and sells stuff IN SPACE. Your job is simply to get rich, and collect X "credits" (something you select on start) in order to "win." You'd think this would be quite an interesting, varied job. Nope!

Well, it is varied. In that everything's random. It's just that everything's too random. The fuel price varies from 40 / unit to 400 / unit, without any predictability. "Shares" in the market are hilariously random, jumping from 1 credit/share to 100 credits/share in a matter of turns (one planetary visit = one turn).

The Prime Minister, who you can sometimes see for free stuff, is more than not unavailable.


You also get some random events, like merchants appearing out of nowhere and selling you stuff or trying to buy your stuff. Generally they're not worth it, as you can find a better price elsewhere.

In addition, every, oh, 10 planets or so you can go to a planet and pick 1 of 3 spots to "look for a special item." These have hilariously terrible names taken straight out of sci-fi garbage. There's no plot to them or anything - you get money if you find them, or nothing if you don't.

And there's pirates! except... they're also terribly random. All fights are measured in damage - you do more damage than them, you win. Losing simply means they take some money and your stuff. Winning means nothing.

Money is not made by careful, well-planned decisions. No, money is made by buying stuff when it's <10 and selling it when it's >20. The inherent randomness means it's quite possible to fill my upgraded cargo of 2500 with Roses bought at 1 each, then sell them all on another planet for 50 each.

To be fair, this could be borderline interesting if it had engaging graphics, some voiceover. It doesn't. It has the single worst graphics I've seen - and I've played a couple of games from 1999.

As an example, consider the supernova random free credits event. There is just one bitmap image as a background, that's always the same. Not a zoomable bitmap or anything, or a 3D object - just a bitmap.

Then there's some random number text. This doesn't have any fancy casino-esque spinny dials. Rather, every 1/4 second or so it simply updates to another number, without anything.

Buttons have no "hover-over" or "depressed" sprites - consider your Steam UI as an example. When you hover your cursor over LIBRARY, it lights up. Click on it, and it lights up even more.

Not in this game. It all looks the same. For every button.

The graphics are terrible. Flash games have better graphics. Scratch games have better graphics. Hell, games designed to mimic CMD's interface have better graphics.

The freaking default Windows Movie Maker has better graphics.

All this game's graphics consist of text and bitmaps. There's a reason why it's only 57 MB in size.

Pirate battles consist of one screen of non-unique sprites and that's all there is to it.



After 73 minutes in the game, I've seen everything. There's nothing new, just some different names for some stuff.




Star Merchant has one bonus. And that is that everything happens when you click. There is no time problem, ever, not even in space battles or exploration, everything happens on one click. This means that it is a very play-at-your-own pace game. Unfortunately this is neutered by the fact that because this game runs in a beserk sort of forced-resolution fullscreen, you can't actually Alt+Tab (or Win+D) out of it.



How To Win:
-> go to a planet
-> pick up passengers (which are essentially free revenue per planet - you don't have to drop them off, presumably they're happy to hop off at the next planet)
-> if fuel price per unit is less than 200, fill to max
-> visit the Prime Minister to see if he has anything to say (usually he can't see you, but visiting him is cheap)
-> upgrade your cargo by 50
-> repair your ship every so often
-> up until here the passengers typically pay most of the above off
-> visit the main Trading Section
-> see if anything can be bought for less than 10 / unit - if so, fill your cargo with it
-> see if anything can be sold for more than 20/unit - if so, sell it
-> next planet


Oh, and there's no tutorial. Not that it takes more than 3min to learn. It's also basically impossible to fail even if you randomly do everything, and it is absolutely impossible to fail if you do the above.

In addition, the game isn't integrated with Steam and the Steam Overlay doesn't work. Else I'd show you some screenshots to show you how terrible it is.

And it insists on running in fullscreen without showing on the taskbar, making it absolutely impossible to Alt+Tab out of.

And the "win" screen is the single most unsatisfying I have seen in the game - just another bitmap with the text "You have recieved fame and honor throughout the galaxy," and an option to go back to the Main Menu.



I wouldn't even reccomend this game if it was free.

Yes, I did just write two mega reviews and flood your activity feed. Anyway;

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds should be called Age of Empires 2: Lasers Edition (and as they’re both a pain to type I’ll call them SWGB and AOE2).

It uses the same engine as AOE2 (or AOE1 for that matter…). Same “four tiers.” Same “all civs have generic and usually useless team bonus.” Some of the upgrades are identical (farms +75 food) for the same price (75 carbon/wood, 75 food). And the Market functionality is completely identical. As for the gameplay, build villagers/workers at your Town/Command Center, chop trees, harvest berry bushes, mine stone/ore, build a Castle/Fortress, train a notoriously OP Trebuchet/Cannon (yes, they’re identical), and beat the identically bad vanilla AI.

That’s not to say this is a bad game. Far from it. It's absolutely great. Coming from AOE2 I knew how the game worked and could jump straight in, and get terribly confused because an AOE2 Castle is 650 Stone and a SWGB Fortress is 550 ore. :P (Or should I say xdddddd?) If you enjoy the fun of an RTS and trying to micro absolutely everything at once then this is AOE2: Lasers Edition. And cheap, too.

Unfortunately SWGB doesn’t quite have the balance of AOE2. SWGB can be accurately summarised as “Mech Destroyers > Everything,” including more Mech Destroyers. Oh sure, there are Strike Mechs which beat troopers which beat Mounted Troopers which beat artillery which beat strike mechs… which are all beaten by Mech Destroyers. (Okay, Mounted Troopers perform okay against Mech Destroyers, except that Mounted Troopers perform badly against lots of other things; troopers, air, heavy defences, when Mech Destroyers don’t).

One diversion from standard AOE2 is the introduction of aerial units – fighters, bombers, transports, and the notorious “Air Cruiser.” Except that if you bring along four Heavy AA Mobiles then you need never bother about air assaults again, and that an AA Turret can outshoot Air Cruisers. Unless you’re in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace (a nice addition to a sci-fi RTS) then spaceships are entirely optional. Still very good because the AI doesn’t have a clue when to train anti-air units (it’ll send AA troopers to attack your base when you have no air despite the fact AA troopers can’t even attack ground units… gg AI)

There’s also shielding, which is pretty cool. If a unit is shielded by a generator / has self-shielding, then it regenerates a – surprise surprise – shield equal to its max HP, so a 40 HP Worker gets 40 HP worth of shielding. The Gungan unique unit is a mobile shield generator which is fantastically OP. In fact, the Gungans are OP anyway. Elite troopers (not that you need those), elite mechs (you need those), elite siege (500 dmg per hit to walls), the best UU in the entire game, a brilliant economy, and for some reason pretty good aircraft (no, I don’t get how birds beat Tie Fighters either).

Oh, and there’s also stealth. It is pretty crummy; only a couple of units (Gungan ships / upgraded Jedi) have stealth, but the counters to those (more ships than they do / Bounty Hunters) have stealth detection, so stealth is barely worth using.

There's one more difference between SWGB and AOE2, and that's the campaigns. AOE2's campaigns were awful. I can't downrate them enough. About three "good" ones out of thirty-something. They were all "Here fight 5+ AI all at once and you're in the worst position possible!" Barely any variety. "Oh, and don't lose this 1HP hero or you fail the mission."

Meanwhile SWGB's campaigns are great. An absolute blast to play. Even the tutorial is fun. I... I can't reccommend the campaigns enough, they're gobsmackingly amazing for such a simplistic RTS. It's usually very difficult to make anything that isn't either a) build-and-destroy or b) an RPG with two units; but SWGB has pulled it off. Good job devs!

There is one major mod for SWGB – Expanding Fronts – which does add one new civ and some nice stuff like widescreen support (always nice). Not much else though and nothing in terms of balance (i.e. Mech Destroyers still > everything). It’s mostly a scenario editor addon with all sorts of buildings and stuff, except that I haven’t watched more than a quarter of Star Wars and hence go “what’s this? What’s that? What’s this spaceship? What is this supposed to be?”

There are separate AI mods that I’m installing and with a bit of luck will be more competent than the original AI (which on a 150 pop map only reaches about 70 pop…. *sigh*).


There’s just one more thing I’d like to say before I summarize, and that is there is basically no point in getting the Steam version of the game. The GOG version[www.gog.com] is identical, except that of course with GOG you can install and run it on multiple computers for a LAN party. Unlike other games which get a Steam remaster, or at least some form of functionality, the Steam version offers nothing. Not even cloud saving or screenshots – F12 brings up the Save Game menu and won’t take a screenshot anyway. There are only three functional differences between the GOG and Steam versions:

1. The Steam version counts your hours
   
2. The GOG version is cheaper
   
3. The GOG version can be run on multiple computers simultaneously (some checks have revealed that if two computers in Offline Mode start Steam SWGB and both click on MP, one of them will invariably crash and delete its executable (???); GOG has no such problem whatsoever

So yeah. This game is basically AOE2: With Lasers edition, if you liked AOE2 you’ll like this, I love it and it now sits next to AOE2 in terms of "Favourite Games To Play on Windy Nights" and there’s no reason whatsoever to get the Steam version – go buy the GOG one. It’s cheaper anyway :P

(P.S. When I say “AOE2” I mean “AOE2,” and not “AOE2 HD” …. that’s another review)

Before I get stuck into it, I should say that you must install the mod Tellurian. Vanilla IC is unbalanced as all heck. Tellurian is amazingly balanced and still being updated.

This game is perhaps the oddest RTS I’ve ever seen. The defining feature of IC is that you can create your own units. In the singleplayer campaign you can edit units on the fly but in skirmish and MP battles you have to pick an “army” consisting of nine units – which isn’t enough to cover all the roles that you can make, so you have to do some prioritising.

The unit creation consists of combining one creature with another and selecting which bodypart of which you want for the stats. You can’t combine three creatures, only two. But there’s more to this than just raw statistics – there are also quite a lot of special abilities. Some of these are passive (e.g. Horns, which reduces enemy defense, Poison Tip, which reduces enemy attack…), and some are triggered (e.g. Stink Cloud, Infest, Electric Burst…). These special abilities are not OP enough to mean that they’re how the game is run, but they’re also not so weak such that they’re not worth it.

Some nuances of the creature editor:

• Combining a Size 1 with a Size 5 animal will always result in a Size 5 animal – even if you have no bodyparts of the Size 5 animal.
  
• Stats scale based on size so that’s why a giant porcupine is more deadly (& more expensive) than a small porcupine
  
• Combining two ranged attacks does nothing but combining two melee attacks means they stack – 10 melee head damage + 10 melee tail damage = 20 damage total
  
• The creature’s overall strength determines its tier level

Now, I mentioned the Tellurian mod. I only got IC about a year ago, where Tellurian (usually just called “Tel”) had been the norm for quite some time. It was still being edited, adding a couple more creatures, adjusting existing ones, and upping the tier times considerably. Before Tellurian came out this game had been played to death by those that stuck with it (the game was released in 2003) and as such the optimal combination for everything was known. As well as how stupidly OP some things were (lobsters, anti-air towers, hovering spam, barrier destroy, the really low Tier V upgrade cost...) Now that Tellurian’s come along with new stuff there’s new strats to try, new creatures to combine, and generally new things to do.

Oh, and Tellurian was nearly included with the Steam version by default. The reason it wasn’t is because this would make it more difficult to update (source: lost to time so not that reliable, but hey – it is very balanced and pretty much nobody plays without it)

As was said, for MP battles / non-campaign SP you can pick nine creatures to run with. Or swim with, or fly with – this RTS is one of the few to have a functional flying class. In fact, it has the oddest classing system I’ve ever seen:

• Melee
  
• Ranged – beats Melee and Fliers
  
• Artillery – attacks with an area of effect, beats ranged
  
• Sonic – beats anything bunched
  
• Fliers – can only be attacked by ranged or artillery units
  • Melee Fliers
    
  • Ranged Fliers – generally not worth it as they’re more expensive
    
  • Artillery Fliers – somewhat broken as they counter ranged units which counter them so it becomes a spam-war
• Amphibious combinations of any of the above

And then of course you can start putting on special abilities – eg fliers with Electric Burst, such that you run in with ten crummy HP units and click Burst right above all the enemy henchemen! Or melee with Stink Cloud such that you can’t be shot at with ranged units. There’s also two types of stealth so you can use those too (upon attacking they become visible for ten seconds, so a lack of stealth detection isn’t a disaster)

More ways in which this is a thoroughly odd RTS:

• One resource is solely generated (Electricity) and the other resource is solely mined (Coal), and the mined resource has a maximum rate per coal pile at which it can be mined (the recommended is 2 henchmen per coal pile)
  
• Units train extraordinarily quickly – as such a game that goes on for an hour is quite long.
  
• Rushing in Tier II (with Tel) is balanced
  
• Tier II / Tier III units are thoroughly useless lategame unless they have some useful special ability. Unlike, say, AOE2, when you can upgrade Militia through to Champions, you can only get some generic “increased HP/attack/line of sight/etc” upgrades and as such you’ll just ignore your T2 / T3 units when you’re in Tier V (the final tier).
  
• The equivalent of your “Town Center” is your lab. You cannot build a second lab and if it is destroyed you are out of the game (fortunately it has pretty high HP as well as some special abilities of its own).
  
• Defensive towers are pretty trash for their price (though the standard tower does have stealth detection…)
  
• Walls are extremely trash and barely worth the micro to build (heck, there aren’t even any gates!)

On the whole this game is about map control – securing the bonus coal piles for a faster gather rate, holding Geysers for more electricity, whacking your opponent’s expansions, etc. It’s not so much about individual unit-to-unit fighting – instead, it’s about fighting for control of the map. If your enemy holds two thirds of the map and you hold one third he will be able to train twice the creatures you can – granted, with some clever micro and cunning unit selection & strats you can still survive or even win.


Anyway, enough on the actual game and now what I think of it.

It’s amazing. It’s one half of the RTS I’ve dreamed about. (The other half is Medieval II: Total War, where you take a Grand Campaign and fight all the battles (if you like) in an RTS fashion.) Impossible Creatures is extremely unique. I’ve never seen any other RTS in which you can create your own units and as outlined above the uniqueness of IC doesn’t stop there. The campaign is extremely cliché, but it’s not bad level design (most of the time), a good introduction into IC, and worth playing no more than twice. The AI is okay but not great & has some abuse tricks of its own (though the only reason it’s a challenge is because on Hard and Expert it just cheats in bucketloads of resources).

The multiplayer community is very much alive and kicking. Not frequent, and if you enter the lobby randomly the chance is about 60% that there will be no-one else there. But they’re still around and most of the organisation happens on their Discord (just make a post on the forum discussions asking “where’s the MP community at.”) On the whole they’re all pretty nice people, despite their tendency to spam “xddddddd” – funny that, the smaller the community usually the nicer it is. Certainly they’re helpful and prompt with their tech support (which 50% of the time is “read the FAQ” xddddd).

This game certainly isn’t for everyone – if you’re up for a more traditional RTS go get AOE2 retail (not HD, that’s a mess) but the unit creation is both a novel and interesting idea that has been very well balanced in Tellurian. But it’s certainly for me :D


One last word: there’s not much of a reason to get the Steam edition when you can get the GOG version[www.gog.com]. The Steam edition has workshop support (but you can install mods manually) and standard Steamworks functionality, but the GOG version has famously no DRM so you can run a LAN party on all your machines at once. Oh, and this is one of the games that basically goes on a 75% off sale whenever due to being so old so you can snaffle it when it’s cheap on both GOG and Steam and get the best of both worlds.

TL;DR This game is gold. Cheap gold, at that.

It’s a delightfully simple platformer that is much more of a “puzzle platformer,” if such a thing exists. The game mechanics are very simple and the controls are nicely tight.

The game mechanics involve avoiding various obstacles (the usual, lava, monsters, projectiles, although there are very little and it’s more trying to get around the level than dodge), and using your Teleport Gun which may or may not have been stolen directly out of Portal or something – I don’t know, as I haven’t played Portal. Whatever its origins, it’s quite an interesting mechanic as it conserves speed, meaning that if you have enough space (and are required to do this twice) you can climb up an entire screen.

The game has nicely low quantities of threats, focusing far more on actually getting to the next stage – especially as you only get something that can actually kill mobs mid-game (and if you head back to that screen, they respawn) You can afford to misjudge a jump or a teleport and nothing bad will happen, really – there’s checkpoints on most levels, and when there isn’t it’s usually because there was a checkpoint at the end of the previous one (“level” is an odd word to use, “screens” is much better).

Surprisingly, the game does not through absurdly large quantities of obscure once-use-only bricks at you that you see in two levels and then never again. The only example is the “Mirror” block, which reflects your teleport bullet horizontally; this appears in three levels and then is completely forgotten about; rather amusingly it’s possible to complete those three levels without using the mirrors anyway.

There’s two other unwritten rules of platformers this game breaks:
- The final boss has only two, not three phases (three is a magical number in video games)
- There is no screen whereby “Jump over the lava pits” / “Jump repeatedly onto platforms”


Speaking of bonus sections, despite being a rather memorable platformer whereby the main challenge is routing, meaning it’s much easier the second time, the game has surprisingly large replay value (for a simple platformer). It took me an hour and a bit to beat the game the first time, but I continued to complete it about five more times (and a good deal of that was in Offline Mode, so that’s why the playtime is so low). The game has this high replay value thanks to a large quantity of bonus sections (on your first playthrough you probably won’t go through about 1/3 of all the screens), which are accessible from the get-go but you haven’t learned the ins and outs of the teleport gun yet. And because the game knows that it’s going to be easy and a bit of a slog, it makes the game easier for you – these bonus sections contain three types of useful stuff. It’s also got interesting, not grinding, achievements which is always something worth noting – and also ones that you probably won’t unlock by accident whilst merely idling through. Most achievements are either “Grind grind grind” (e.g. AOE2’s “Win as Civ X 1000 times for EVERY SINGLE CIVILIZATION (about twenty of them) or “Play the game” (e.g. Terraria’s “Chop a tree! Make an anvil! Find a chest!), and it’s nice to see some achievements that you not so much have to actively think about getting – it’s more they don’t happen by accident. If you explore lots you’re bound to get a good deal of them.

This is also the only game whereby I have been able to stunlock the boss thanks to some exploits in the boss AI, as well as fire more bullets than the final boss does – however, this requires intensive exploration. When you fight the first phase of the boss, despite only having one life his attacks are easy to dodge when you know how (although I spent a solid seven minutes dying repeatedly until learning how to dodge) – when you have four and a machine gun it does become a bit of a joke. Still, it is a lighthearted final boss in line with the light difficulty of the rest of the platformer. It’s more puzzle than run ‘n’ gun, although not much “running” happens anyway.

The difficulty curve is very nice, probably slightly too slow – but the game is very lighthearted and not meant to be insanely difficult. The game gives you a decently large quantity of hints in the game on tips of your teleport gun, but not enough to be an insta-win and also low enough to keep me occupied on a single screen for about ten minutes before finally working out what to do.


Progression is extremely linear with the exception of about three cases, which is a bit odd as this game would have lent itself to a multi-route system extremely well.


The soundtrack is merely “good.” What stops it from being “excellent” is the fact that the composer had so many nice melodies, nicely hummable in their own right, and just lumped them all on top of one another in certain sections. To call those parts of the music “busy” is an understatement, but one track – Surface – doesn’t do that nearly as much and is much nicer to listen to. If the soundtrack was a little more… heh, a little more ‘empty’ in places (only in places) it would be “excellent.”

Oh, and the game has precious little plot, enough to give you information on what’s going on but nothing particularly huge – but unlike some platformers, it doesn’t throw you into wacko things that should never have existed (why are there so many homing rockets and landmines in some icy mountains? Who put these all there and why is there a convenient route through them instead of an impassable barrier – that’s Airscape for you). So that’s nice.

And to top it all off, I checked the Store Page’s price.
$1.09 NZD – and that wasn’t on sale. It wasn’t on sale. Amazing.