Developer: Lithe
Platform: PC (as a custom map for Starcraft II)
Release Year: 2010
Stephen's Rating: 7/10
Premise
Two competing teams have arrived on a planet to extract resources. They go head to head to compete for resources in order to wipe each other out.
Gameplay
The game involves two teams of three players, at each end of a large map. Between the two teams are three canyons with three "resource checkpoints" along them. Players build buildings at the end of these canyons and every 30 seconds one unit will spawn from each building and begin walking down the canyon toward the enemy base. Units engage each other automatically (no direct control is necessary) leaving the player free to focus on the strategy of which units to build to counter those of his opponent.
Resources are obtained at regular intervals as well. The amount of money you get depends on two main factors. Firstly, the more checkpoints that your team controls (i.e. that your team's units are in front of, or have touched last) the more money you get. Secondly, players can spend money investing in one of the three canyons (or lanes). If you have invested more in a lane you recieve higher income from it. Therefore the goal is to try and invest in a lane which your team has strong control and territory within, and to stop the opposing team from doing the same. There is also a balance between investing in your future economy and building units to keep up with the enemy.
Units are broken up into tiers and have to be researched and the research centre. This takes time and costs money to do, so the timing is important (when your team is ahead). Tier 1 includes basic units such as marines, zerglings, zealots, reapers, and hydralisks. Tier 2 contains a larger variety of more powerful units, and tier 3 contains the elite units such as void rays and siege tanks. Each player also recieves 1 gas which can be spend on one tier 4 unit such as a carrier, battlecruiser, archon, infestor, or collossus.
Players can also spend money on abilities which are on a cooldown. These are the wraith run which sends a wraith down one lane who drops bombs to help your forces, and spore salvo which dropped acid on any enemy army within your vision. Each player also had one plea for help which destroyed all the units in a lane.
The game became about balancing whether to tech up, invest in a lane, or build more forces. In choosing units you worked to counter the units of your opponent. For example; if your opponent was simply massing marines you might choose hydralisks to counter or try and tech up to teir 4 and get a collossus to ruin them in the late game.
Team work could make or break a game. Because each player had to take time and resources to research new units, you could split up the research between your team mates to be more efficient and share units with each other's lanes. This is how we won a lot of our games, by working together.
Positives
This game was excellent if you wanted to focus more on economy and unit composition rather than micro management of units. It is more relaxed but just as engaging as the original game.
Negatives
They released a patch which ruined everything. The game is terrible now, and no-one plays it
One thing which bothered me was that a smaller team tended to have an income advantage and win, so if someone left the game it would ruin the game for everyonen else (almost always).
Memorable Moments
At one stage we had a strategy of massing marines. Sometimes we'd have half a dozen or more solid ranks of marines and doing this we'd win a surprising number of times.
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