Rock, Paper, Shotgun

If you mind is keen, like the edge of a freshly sharpened bayonet, you will remember top-down real-time tactics game Running With Rifles. That game is still in development, of course, but that development is bearing the fruit of considerable progress. Not only does it look at least twice as fetching as it looked the last time I used my eyes on it, but it also now boasts co-op stealth happenings, as you can see in a new video, below. Developer Pasi Kainiemi explains: ” We got into playing RWR all sneaky and set out to find the enemy comms truck. It almost got away at the latter part of the video when we failed to stay unnoticed, fun stuff.” And it is.
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Every so often – let’s say twice a day – somebody calmly reminds me that I wrote about a game at some point in the past and have failed to revisit in order to see how things have changed. Guilty as charged. Oddly that hasn’t happened in regards to Running With Rifles, the rather excellent indie squad shooter. It has more in common with Cannon Fodder than Call of Duty, but with a two-way battle that sways back and forth, the factions attempting to defend their own bases and launch attacks against their opponents’. It looks more pleasant now, with colours other than brown so that the fields of conflict don’t resemble the forlorn stains that indecorously decorate a broken man’s bedsit. Oh yeah, and there’s multiplayer too.

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How many of you are still playing Running With Rifles, the murky yet marvellous top-down tactical shooter Jim introduced you to a while back? Unless the answer is most of you, it’s not enough. Maybe you thought the game wouldn’t receive any significant updates for an age. I’m pleased to announce that you were very wrong indeed. So, stand corrected, chin up, and prepare to go forth and battle once more. This alpha 0.351 update doesn’t add tanks, planes or classes, it’s simply an evolution of the core concept, which is tiny armies of soldiers shooting each other. How do you make that more entertaining?

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Okay, look, this is a tough one for good screenshots, but nevertheless promising. It’s an oddity that I am sure a few of you will be interested in. It’s an early version of a game by Modulaatio Games, called Running With Rifles. You can download it on the site there. The game is a top-down, Cannon Fodder-y sort of soldier thing, but on a wide-open sandbox of a battlefield. There are two nations shooting each other and drawing up battle-lines across the map. (Hit Tab to see what’s going on in terms of the territory, and also to guide yourself to the action via the onscreen info-prompts.) The battles are brief and brutal, but if you start working with the AI there’s some interesting stuff going on. Just be prepared for a lot of running. I’ve not managed to get an online game (presumably not working yet) but it’s something that could evolve interestingly in the coming months. Right now I’m imagining a sort of 2D Battlefield game, with teeming AI. Something like that.
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