Warparty walks the dinosaur out of early access
Yabba dabba do or die
In the grim darkness of Bedrock, there is only war. At least, that's how I'm rationalising Warparty's comic-book cave-people fighting alongside dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. Developed by Warcave and Crazy Monkey Studios, it was released yesterday after a while in early access. Warparty is a traditional base-building RTS with three factions of prehistoric people just itching to biff each other. That might be just what the shaman ordered, considering that it seems to be a rather under-sold genre lately. Below, the launch trailer introducing each of the three playable tribes.
Fun prehistoric setting aside, Warparty looks like it plays it by the RTS book, which was also written during the Mesozoic era. There's your traditional Straightforward/Sneaky/Technical three factions, a story campaign, a horde survival mode and skirmishes against AI. There's online multiplayer, an observer mode for taking notes on other people's strategies and official rankings and leaderboards. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the developers do note that ranked multiplayer matches are hosted on their servers so as to prevent dino-skulduggery.
I've not had a chance to try the game for myself, so I can't speak from experience, but the Steam user reviews paint an interesting picture so far. It seems mostly well received, but with common complaints that the game is too macro-management focused, and that it sadly doesn't have a map editor. There is talk of the UI being well tuned, and hotkeys customisable, though. I'm curious to hear from a Warcraft or Age Of Empires veteran how it stacks up against those eternal gems. My only take now is that the lady with the huge horned shoulder-pads missed out by not carving the ends of them into fists so it looks like she's flexing with four arms at once.
Warparty is out now on Steam for £17.99/€22.49/$22.49