Rock, Paper, Shotgun

While we’ll write more about it when it hits a full release, Cryptic Comet has lobbed a beta of the latest Armageddon Empires free mini-expansion online. Tip of Spear is about adding utility to the overlooked footsoldiers of our favourite turn-based post-apocalyptic strategy game of last year. Vic Davis shows off the card art as well as reveals some of the rules – like an optional fuel cost for the big guys, and others to encourage combined arms and… oh, go and read. Thanks to James Williamson for the heads up.

Two stories caught my eye. Firstly, Cryptic Comet – as well as revealing Solium Infernum – announced their next free content patch for Armageddon Empires. The innuendo-provoking Tip Of The Spear is primarily about increasing the utility of infantry troops through new advanced training cards. It’s due on the 17th of July, the anniversary of the game’s release. Which is nice. Secondly, Crytek announcing that the long awaited 1.3 version of the Crysispatch “almost certainly” isn’t going to come out. And not in a skipping straight onto 1.4 way. They’re just not going to bother. Which is less nice.

So… how much patching can a community actually expect?
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Perhaps appropriately in the week when we’ve been talking about Scientology, Cryptic Comet release their Cults Of The Wasteland free mini-add-on for our favourite turn-based strategy game of 2007. That is, the ever-lovin’ child of Vic Davis, Armageddon Empires. I love it. It was Tom Chick’s fourth favourite game of 2007, despite the fact it only has one hot-key. It was strategy-specialist Troy Goodfellow’s favourite independent game of the year. Jim – questioned as he’s bringing me more tea – describes it as “a fun time”. Hell, even Alec loves it, and Alec doesn’t like orgasms.

Now, there’s a load of links for you to explore the game if you don’t know it yet – The Demo’s here - and we still haven’t talked about what’s in the pack. Better do that, perhaps enlivened by a little “describe a game I’ve just played”ism.
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Armageddon Empires was RPS’ favourite turn-based strategy game of 2007. So it was kinda inevitable its creator, Vic Davis, would be one of the first people we’d want to talk to in our new series of indie-interviews. Self-effacingly Vic describes himself as a pretty boring average geek, but the resultant exchange undermines that. I dare say there aren’t many developers who’ve flown a single combat reconnaissance mission, let alone one-hundred. As well as talking about his background to becoming a games developer, we discuss his debut-game, what inspires it, what inspires him, the fifth-faction from Armageddon Empires which he dropped, the Darklands-esque game he abandoned to turn to lure of the wasteland and what he’s planning next….
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My review of Armageddon Empires goes live over at Eurogamer. In which I start like…

There’s something about December that makes me crave turn-based strategy. I don’t know what it is – some kind of deep grained memory that when you can’t go outside it’s time to play boardgames or something. While I’ve been dabbling with everything from Fantasy Wars to (just starting) the New Galacitic Civilization beta, this is what’s been dominating.
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Dominating everything.

And then proceed to accelerate towards the end of my word count, and then straight off into space. In short: Aces.

Oh, God, I’m not going to be able to get a decent screenshot for this. Let’s go with…

As at least it shows some pickytures and features the brilliant phrase “Zombie Launcher” rather than a load of Hexes. Anyway, I’m reviewing this Turn-based strategy/Deck-building game for Eurogamer at the moment, but since I’m late to the party, I thought I should plug it and recommend anyone into a neat single player Strategy game at least give the 59Mb (Ooh – some peggles?) demo a shot. It’s biggest weakness is one which will become immediately apparent, in having a somewhat obtuse interface which does it’s does its best to hide its options all over the place, but Bill Harris does a big one! two! three! four! five! part walkthrough to get you past it. Which is worth reading anyway, as it explains much of its charm.