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| Assemble your people... | For battle awaits... |
This game is incredibly well thought out and designed, and while it is fairly simple to play, remains challenging none the less. You begin the game with a handful of peons to do the grunt work, and your first task is to build them somewhere to live so that they may procreate in modesty and produce more and more peons to build your armories and towers. Once you've built an armory, your peons rush to it and you can allocate them tasks including gather resources, making weapons, as well as raising an army.
There are some nice touches to the game such as the ability for you to train a chief instead of produce more peons, if you're under siege you can always stop training the chief, but once he's ready he adds to your arsenal with magical powers.
There are several ways to play the game, Single Player, Campaign, and Multiplayer. Single Player mode is where you get the opportunity to run through one scenario, and is a good place to practice tactics. There are various terrains available, which makes things more interesting, as well as a myriad of computer generated maps. Single Player mode offers a good range of options, from the tenacity and skifulness of the AI, to the size of the map you wish to play on, including various map features.
Campaign Mode allows you to play through several different pre made scenarios, which are challenging for a beginner on easy mode, and offer various levels of difficulties as you progress through the game. The story lines are fairly cute and provide ample reason to go slaughter some natives, or perhaps some barbarians, depending on which side you've chosen to play.
Multiplayer offers an interesting experience, mostly due to the fact that there isn't any easily accessible help. It's a terrifying experience being set upon by hundreds of AI controlled warriors intent on your destruction. Speaking of AI, the AI is deadly. Even on the easy levels they put up a fairly good fight if you don't outnumber them fast enough, and you always have to keep tactics in mind also. There aren't too many players on the server at present, although the ones that are there seem to be full of character.
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| Behold the carnage... | And the hordes... |
The nice thing about Tribal Trouble is the interface, which is intuitive and easy to use. You can load this game up and start playing, and while you might miss some of the nuances, you can basically figure things out from the graphics and the text prompts which help you in case a hand holding a hatchet or spear didn't scream 'attack' to you.
Tribal Trouble could perhaps be faulted on its lack of options, you only have the choice between playing Vikings or Natives at the moment, but both are rendered so charmingly it's hard to get worked up about that.
Other great design features include the map system, which allows you to zoom in close to your units, zoom way out, or even switch to a 2D view in case you've gotten lost on a bigger island. You can also tilt the camera up and down, which means that there's never any trouble seeing exactly what's going on anywhere in the game. Character design is cute and cartoony, and while it's not going to win any graphic design awards for detail, it really doesn't matter. You're going to be clicking too frantically on various units, overseeing weapons production and keeping an eye on the enemy to worry about that anyway. The nice thing about the environmental graphics is that they actually look quite nice close up as well, this means that your camera may be blocked by the leafy fronds of a palm tree, but it's easy enough to swing around it and take a look whats on the other side.
You can tend to forget units in the heat of battle, as once they have performed their purpose they have a tendency to just stop and wait for the next orders. The game play can be incredibly engrossing, drawing you in as you scurry about, desperately trying to gather enough materials to equip your warriors, even as angry tribesmen hurl spears at the armory.
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| The magic is with you... | The adventure is here... |
This is an incredibly good time at a reasonable price. The demo is downloadable from Oddlabs.com and it's definitely worth a look if you're looking for a fun action filled strategy game.
Top Game Moment:
TOP GAME MOMENT
Staring down hundreds of purple native tribesmen as they encircled my last three peons. They died nobly.
