Reviews

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

In this game you control a population of little beings in a small but fertile meteorite floating all alone in the vast empty space. You can build up a society with farms, lumberjacks, defenders and healers while you have to stand back and watch how your island is destroyed bit by bit, slowly at first but then at an alarming rate.

When I first saw the screenshots of this game I had to think of Easter island. You know it is said that Easter island once housed a large population until the islanders cut down their last tree? Unlike the Easter islanders, the inhabitants of this game are not the cause of their own destruction. This comes at hand of something that looks like evil purple space mana. This mana drops down from space and seems harmless at first, but after a while it literally punches holes in your island, and destroys your buildings and inhabitants.

You can build defenders to defend, but housing the defenders costs a lot of wood. You can get wood by attracting woodcutters, but cutting down trees makes your land more exposed to the evil mana. Construction takes time as well, you can add an extra constructor if you\'re willing to gamble that you can make up this lost time. The purple infection spreads at an alarming rate and usually one defender is not enough to cope.

Most of the time you don\'t have enough time or wood or people to do all these things and your land is quickly turned into swiss cheese by the purple menace. Only one time, probably by luck, I succeeded in building an extra constructor, two lumberjacks and two defenders before I got a single infection spot. As long as there is little purple spots around the defenders can cope easily and this was sustainable for a while, until that moment that for some reason both my lumberjacks got stuck near a construction site and before I noticed I ran out of wood, both my defenders were struck down by a descending piece of evil and I was back in swiss cheese mode again.

For the sake of the competition I have to note that this entry lacks atan2. Hence, low score for the technical part.

But other than that this entry is great. The game has cute graphics. I especially like the way the land slowly corrodes and black space appears through the gaps, it really makes you feel concerned. This game is too difficult as it is but all the tunables are there: if there were a little grace period without purple falling from the sky while you build up, if the infection would spread a little slower and if the defenders were a little quicker this could really work. I haven\'t seen an RTS game in TINS or speedhack yet, they are technically really hard to pull off in a weekend so the fact that this game is so close to complete is a real stunt. Please Allefant, tune this up a bit and release again, I would really love to play more!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 5

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

I\'m not obliged to write a review on this, so it will be short.

First, I\'d like to note that this is my favourite entry from TINS \'08. Second, amarillion already covered the game in his review in much detail. So, instead of explaining why I like it, I shall use the review system for feedback - to put a few suggestions that can make it more playable.

1) Some quiet time at start (one minute?), to be able to build some structures before the first meteor can fall on your land. That can be no meteors, or no land destruction from already fallen meteors.

2) Improved pathfinding and target assignment, at least for defenders; right now, these two are the causes of stupidly losing the game.

3) If the issues 1) and 2) are somehow dealt with, the game will become too easy, so maybe increasing the meteor rate and/or the destruction speed with time would be nice.

4) Some text hints on what to build at start, to make learning the game pretty easy.

5) Different levels with more than one piece of land and different starting locations.

Thanks for the game, I really hope to see a more polished version of this entry!

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 5

Review by Sos all reviews by Sos

This is a settlers-like real time strategy game. You are a master of an floating island which reminds the ones you see in Netstorm. Your island is surrounded by 4 smaller ones, each carrying an evil spire. Each spire occasionally sends \'an evil\' towards your island. This Evil can either destroy one of your bouildings or trees or plant itself in the island gradually eating it, and reproduce itself in the process. You can build several different structures on your island, each providing you with different unit:

Woodcut: cuts down trees, and provides you with wood, the only material used for building.
Constructor: constructs building, available from the beginning
Planter: Plants trees
Protector: gets rid of the evil spawn from your world. It converts it into Mana
Farmer: provides citizents with food
Residence: provides 5 inhabitants
Healer: uses mana to extend the land

Game mechanics work quite well. Each unit is controlled by AI, without need to worry by the player. A unit action goes in two turns: first it goes out of its hut, does his job, then returns into hut. Some of the units seem to \'get lost\' in this small piece of world by, for instance cutting a tree on thew other side of the island while there still are plenty of trees near the hut.

The rules are met quite well:
World domination: in this game YOU control the world, so it\'s very well met.
Insulting dialogs: units seem to express their narrow world perception every now and then by uttering some quotes like \"I\'m a lumberjack and I\'m okay\", some are insulting the player, so the rule is met alright.
atan2: only occurance of atan is in one of the npc\'s sentence saying that the creator had no idea what atan2 is.
Destruction: those evil spawns will keep eating your island regardless how big army have you built, so it\'s met
Act of Letterman: the same as for atan2, this sentence makes fun of the creator clearly.

Game\'s art resembles a hybrid between settlers and netstorm, and give\'s quite a nice impression. Overall, the game is playable, I don\'t know whether it\'s winnable, because it\'s hard as hell.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 4