Creeper World 4 gloops into the third dimension
Have you ever wanted to punch an ocean?
The Creeper World series are strategy games unlike any other, and Sin Vega reckons they have the best monster of any game, even if the title is a bit rubbish. Part tower defence, part traditional RTS, part fluid dynamics sim, I've been a fan of Knuckle Cracker's quirky if utilitarian-looking series for years now. The next game in the series - Creeper World 4 - will be the first to properly delve into the third dimension. With any luck, it'll bring new depth (figurative or otherwise) to my years-long battle against an endless tide of caustic blue goo. Take a peek at an early trailer below.
Creeper World 4 is already looking like a significantly more complex and involved game than its predecessors. Modular factories, multiple resources to collect and use and - as is standard for the series - a lot of focus on your distribution and logistics network keeping your units fuelled and guns loaded. The Creeper itself - the blue ooze - feels somewhat more menacing (yet soothing to look at) thanks to its surface rippling and deforming with every shot and every explosive burst of new mass spawning in. Islands thought safe can be washed over by high waves crashing down on them, compromising what would have previously been safe terrain.
And here's the latest video dev-diary, taking a far more comprehensive look at the game in action, and delving into one of the other new wrinkles to this game - orbital weaponry. Once launched into space, satellites can drop down damping fields to slow down creeper movement, or bombard a small section of the battlefield, ideally close to the source of the incoming goo. In the video below, the developer uses it to establish an outpost on a remote island deep in the creeper sea. A lot of features have only just been implemented as of the month-old video, so everything could still change, but it feels like the game has a clear identity now.
Knuckle Cracker being an endlessly experimenting one-man outfit means that there's no date yet for Creeper World 4, but it did get a Steam store page and new trailer today. If you want to see more, check out the developer's YouTube channel and Discord. In the meantime, I highly recommend Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal and space naval spinoff Particle Fleet: Emergence.