Making one game can be an expensive ordeal. After all, between developers, art designers, music, licensing, and everything that entails going into a game, making just one product can be an ordeal. There’s not too much you can do other than penny pinching as much as you can to make a game. W!Games seems to have found an interesting solution to this problem: design a whole game universe that not one game will be built on, but rather, a whole series of games. Thus is born the Mistbound IP.
Brand new, the Mistbound universe is that of peoples in the midst of an industrial revolution. Wild and picturesque lands have been squashed beneath mining and crass consumerism. Surrounded by floating mists, the island is isolated. Unfortunately, the rampant mining has escalated the already deep and divisive gorges that cross the nations. With the industrial expansion, the gorges have split farther and deeper, cutting the once unified nation into separate factions, all the while more and more of the island falls into the mist below. This is the foundation for W!Games first game in the series, Greed Corp. Hit the jump for my impressions.
Greed Corp (XBLA, PSN, Steam)
Developer: W!Games
Publisher: Easy Tiger Media
To be released: Spring 2010
There is no actual game of “Mistbound,” rather it is the unifying world that at least two (and certainly more) games will be based in. Other than Greed Corp, the hexagonal turn-based strategy game coming this spring (and previewed below), there is a twin-stick shooter taking place in the same world that will come out this fall. That one will tell the story of a Freeman farmer who is trying to reclaim his land and be peaceful…all the while shooting dudes. Nice.
However, all of these games tied to the Mistbound universe will share many of the art and assets to the game, saving time and money, as well as creating a multifaceted gameplay experience. Pretty cool, if you think about. Even more, W!Games is considering making a full disc-based compilation once all of the Mistbound games release. [Editor’s Note: W!Games wants to reiterate that a boxed set is very much in the air, so don’t necessarily expect it.]
But that finally brings us to Greed Corp. This first Mistbound game is a turn-based strategy game with the four factions. There are the militarized Empire, the corporate-power Cartel, the independent Pirates and the goodie Freemen. Each one has a different look to their units, but each ultimately plays the same.
Gameplay is either 2-, 3-, or 4-player affairs, with twelve multiplayer maps, and 24 single-player campaign missions. Battles take place on these isolated islands in the sky, with each hex tile a certain height. This is very important, as due to the actions of the players, either by attacking the tiles with Cannons, or using a resource Harvester for money, those tiles will slowly sink down. Once a tile is empty, that tile will fall off the map, taking any buildings or units with it.
And those units are important. Walkers are your military units. They look different for each of the factions, but function the same. Their job is to overtake tiles on the grid to gain resources and place buildings, and ultimately defeat the other teams. Battles between Walkers is extremely bare bones, for if you have five walkers moving onto a tile with three enemy units, it’ll just change over to saying you have two units on that tile now. For a fairly good looking downloadable title, this was oddly the simplest element of the game.
The previously mentioned Harvesters are the resource gainers, but they function with armories, which build more Walker units, as well as summon Carriers, which are one time use units that are costly, but can drop Walkers off at any tile on the map. Finally, there are cannons, which cost a lot, requires the purchase of ammo, but can damage from far off, as well as start chain reactions knocking tiles off the playing field.
Thus, there is a balance that must be struck: without money, you will not be able to build more units, but to get more units, you have to literally destroy the land that you are on. Those Harvesters have a nasty way of taking out a whole lot of land, and getting rid of one has a costly effect of setting off chain reactions. There is a strong balance between making sure you can fight and not having the entire game floor fall out under you.
A neat result of this game is that battles are extremely fast. With whole sections of the battle field falling out, and resources tight, you will rarely spend more than 15 minutes in a 2-player match, and no more than an hour in a 4-player match. This looks like a smart decision for a console-based game, as no one wants to be locked into a two hour battle.
Visually, I found this game to be quite nice. The art direction has a neat steampunk feel, and the contrast between the desert/lush/snowy environments with the industrialized units is striking. The game is simple and gets the job done. One especially great element of my time with Greed Corp is the old-time music. A fusion of some jazz and some ragtime, the music fits the feel of the game nicely. Even more, all of this was done in-house, so it really has a feel of what’s going to work well with the game.
I should mention this, but the new twin-stick game in the franchise coming out this Fall is already a great looking downloadable title, one that should receive some attention soon. Keep your eyes out for that.
There’s a whole lot to pay attention to with Greed Corp. Not only doesn’t represent the first of a series of titles united by a shared universe, it also represents a new way of making games. W! Games seems to be onto something by building the world from the ground up and then making the games that best fit that. Not a bad way to do things, now let’s see how well they can pull that off. Expect Greed Corp on XBLA/PSN within two months, and out on Steam within two months after that, all with an estimated price of ten bucks.
Published: Jan 19, 2010 07:00 am