Alright well this game didn't exactly "work" in the traditional sense...It crashed way too often to be considered playable. However, it did give me enough material to review it as if it did work...sort of.
Ok so the first thing you'll notice about this game is that there's no "how to play" screen. Oh good, you may say, Dean doesn't get to complain about the game insulting his intelligence by telling him how to WASD. Well, you're right, but as long as there are things in existence, mark my words, I will always find something to complain about. To be fair, I figured out everything I needed to within 5 minutes of playing, so the game doesn't convey things too horribly. It's just that they messed up a lot of simple things. Since when, for example, is it considered okay to highlight the names of the players' team in red? Especially considering that on the team selection screen, the player's name is in blue, this made figuring out who to click on more of a pain than it needed to be.
Anyways, what happens once you actually get the game figured out? Well, it's quite rewarding, actually. The concept alone is enough to sell me. This is what a "real time strategy game" should be! See, I have no problem micro-managing action points or resources or whatever if it means I can have a definite grasp of what I'm doing and how each action will influence the events of the game. This game pulls that off perfectly. You have no idea where your opponents are going to move or, therefore, where you should aim. You have to get into the head of the enemy and figure out what they're going to do and how to counter it. It's slow-paced, but really intense.
Everything else is really secondary. I would love to see a game like this get polished and re-released. I'm a stingy ol' miser, but even I'd fork over a few bucks on Steam or what have you for a version of this game that didn't crash every 2 minutes. Well done, DigiPen. This game, or rather the hypothetical functional version of this game, gets my seal of approval.
That's all for now. Until next time, stay chill.
Links
Rice Whores: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=509
