PC Gaming: Indie Game Developer Gamecock Shines at EIEIO 2008 - Part 2Game publisher Gamecocks upcoming releases continued...
Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi (DS) and Mushroom Men: the Spore Wars for Wii (Red Fly Studios) - Rated "RP" 
The
Mushroom Men games are set in our own world, but in a part that is out of our sight. In the wake of a comet's impact with the Earth, the planet is covered with a strange green dust. Deemed harmless, humans disregard it, but here and there strange things are happening. Flowers, cacti, vines and yes, mushrooms are not only becoming self-aware, they are forming into tribes. These two games follow the exploits of the brave shrooms from the Bolete tribe.
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Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi for DS is a sidescrolling platformer prequel to
The Spore Wars for Wii and details the Bolete struggle for precious resources in a large world full of mutated, hungry insects and other creatures. The overall emphasis in
Rise of the Fungi is on the power of the Bolete, regardless of their small size. Players have their choice of three character classes: the Heavy, the Sage, and the Scout, each with its own special abilities. All three will be able to construct weapons out of scavenged real-world items that are rated for use against specific enemies and will be able to upgrade both their abilities and weapons by collecting green orbs scattered throughout the game. The game has three settings, easy, medium and hard and demoed gameplay showed characters leaping from foothold to foothold, as well as moving items to create bridges to extend jumps. There are ten levels of singleplayer and co-op action. Each level has two screens, making for 20 playable areas. A few additional features include mini games to build skill levels, healing areas where players can replenish themselves, separate control schemes for left and right-handed players, and save points represented by "reminiscent mushrooms." These save points also can be used in co-op play to resurrect a fallen companion. Two final notable features include duel screen utilization providing a real-time map and game graphics described as "2.5D" due to their nearly 3D quality.
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Mushroom Men: the Spore Wars for Wii picks up where its DS counterpart left off. There are similarities between the two games, but many more differences. First the game takes place in the same game universe, but you play as a single Bolete, "Pax," whose village has been invaded by a rival tribe of poisonous fungi and is trying to warn an allied tribe that they are next. Wandering the gardens and tool sheds of his realm Pax must deal with a whole range of enemies ranging from mutated rabbits, scary insects and lively foliage and environmental bosses like the jack-a-lope. But he is well equipped to do so. As in the DS game there is an array of weapons available that can be constructed out of found items, with developers stating the upper limit of possible combinations being more than 40. In addition, players can harness/channel their "Spore Power," a sort of force for fungus. This is collected from sentient plants and has a variety of uses ranging from telekinesis used to drop heavy items on to creatures from above, focused blasts to drive enemies back and to provide healing powers when under heavy attack.
Spore Wars also provides additional ways to move, including a lateral roll and more impressively grapple and glide functionality (via Pax's cap) that can be used in tandem. Finally, though Red Fly developers on hand were tight-lipped on the question of multiplayer options, they also left the impression that this was almost certainly a given.
Both versions of
Mushroom Men are tentatively slated for a Q4 '08 release and the hopes are for an E10+ rating. Q4 is a long way away, but these two, especially
Spore Wars are both already looking very good and I'd be very surprised if they don't do well.
Velvet Assassin (Replay Studios) - next-gen consoles, PC; Rated "RP" ![]()
Velvet Assassin is a Stealth Shooter, set during WWII in and around Nazi installations in Europe. By the look of the demo the game appears to be far from done, but the basic break down is that you play as Violette Summer, a female undercover agent/assassin tasked with two things: to hamper the Nazi war machine by taking out enemy units behind the lines, and more focused missions involving sabotage of facilities, submarines in port and assassinations. According to Sasha Jungnickel, Creative Director and co-founder of Replay Studios who demoed the game, the Violette Summer character is inspired by an actual British agent who lived something similar to the gameplay.
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The fact that the main character of a WWII game is a woman is a bit of a departure, but shouldn't be a turn off, in fact far from it if you get my meaning. Not only is Violette deadly with a wide array of classic WWII era weapons, but by the looks of some of the stills and in-game cut scenes, she is also going to be using her considerable sexuality to bring down the third Reich. The game's action is framed in realistic, but dream-like sequences. This combined with the fact that we often see shots of Violette in a night gown and Sasha's statement that "this adventure doesn't end well" for Viollete, lead me to guess that much of the dream-like action in the game may be unconscious flashbacks, but there is another possibility. One of the other things that Violette carries on her missions is "Morphine." It's used something along the lines of the nectar in
Haze. Usually drugs only affect the user, but in this case injecting it slows time, allowing the player to get the upper hand on enemies.
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There is a limited supply allowed the character, so it should only be used when in dire need. Besides allowing for an easy kill of enemies an additional downside/upside of morphine is that it is possible to overdose. It won't kill you, but it will slow you down considerably making you very vulnerable to attack. The upside is that during the overdose useful things will be revealed to you that will doubtless come in handy as the game progresses. One final feature of the game that will be of interest primarily to fans of the Stealth genre is that
VA will employ dynamic shadowing instead of the usual static treatment. This means that as players are sneaking around they will have to be aware that as the game's lighting changes, so will the shadows providing cover, creating more of a challenge as you move past enemy units and through installations.
Although tentatively planned for Q3 2008, as I said,
Velvet Assassin looks like it has a way to go yet before it's ready for prime time. Regardless, the project looks like it could be interesting if not for the atypical positioning of a woman as lead in the action, then for the German development team's take on WWII gameplay.
Stronghold Crusader: Extreme (Firefly Studios) – PC; Rated "RP" ![]()
A follow-up to FireFly Studios’
Stronghold and its expansion pack,
Stronghold: Crusader, Stronghold Crusader Extreme is a historically accurate real-time Strategy (RTS) game set during the First, Second and Third Crusades.
This franchise is all about hardcore castle building and large-scale siege warfare and
Stronghold Crusader Extreme certainly doesn't departure from that.
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Although it does come bundled with a copy of both the previous games in the series,
Extreme brings a few additions of its own. The first and most impressive is an increase in the number of troops allowed on the field. In the previous release this was limited to 1,000, but
Extreme blows that away with new troop cap of 10,000. Even when spread between the eight possible factions, either AI or human allowed in a single game, this is well, an extreme amount and one that could almost seems cumbersome. Another new feature is the addition of the outpost unit. In castle warfare you have to expect a fairly long time for your primary unit to be completed, making the small, mobile outpost very valuable. Used correctly players should be able to take the fight to their Saracen and rival Crusader neighbors as they set up temporary camp on their borders and churn out infantry to harass their perimeter.
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The game also comes with a variety of new AI opponents, each posing a different tactical challenge, as well a total of 30 stand-alone maps for use in either multiplayer or singleplayer battles.
RTS fans are known to be a rabid bunch and according to FireFly developers on hand the
Stronghold IP is still very popular in the community and its gameplay as addictive as ever, even after six years in the market. Working on this assumption, long-time fans of the franchise, as well as new comers may well be happy with what they get in this new release as long as they can hand the crowded battle fields.
Click
here to read part one of Amazon's coverage of EIEIO 2008.
--Hobson's Choice
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