Remember when the DS was first announced and everyone was praising its capability as a platform for portable RTS games? Yeah, well that never really happened. And while we’ve seen a handful of said games, we’ve yet to see anything in the vein of a traditional Starcraft or Command & Conquer experience.
Intrinsic Games’ newest DSiWare project—titled Amoebattle—isn’t exactly traditional per se, but it is being headed up by Keith Riley Co, an RTS veteran who worked on both C&C: RA3 and C&C4. Thanks to that, it wisely borrows some of the smooth mechanisms of well-executed RTS and boils them down to a casual-friendly experience.
The basic premise of the game is simple: you are a microbiologist commanding a squad of amoebas, guiding them through various biologically-themed environments riddled with enemy protozoans and other hazards. Your objectives throughout the eleven total missions vary (and fresh concepts are regularly introduced), but in general, the basic idea is (as usual) to tactically destroy the enemy troops and make it through alive.
Your amoebas come in three flavors: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores—and there are three of each type in the game, for a total of nine. Omnivores are the most well-rounded of the three, as they can get food points by both eating algae and defeating enemy units; they also regain health faster than the other units, generally making them sturdier. They also receive no movement penalty on specific terrain which slows all others down. Carnivores are the real close-range fighters; they regain health slowly and otherwise only by defeating baddies, but they get a lot back with each kill. They’re also stealthed, which is awfully useful as you might imagine. And herbivores, finally, require the algae for food, and become incredibly overpowered if they’re kept in close proximity to it. But they shouldn’t be your choice for face-to-face combat (they do have a nifty ranged attack however).
Collecting DNA gives you access to these other varieties, and by consuming enough food (by way of whatever source your unit type prefers), you’ll be able to work a little mitosis magic and asexually reproduce into another unit of the same type. You can accelerate your energy collection also by planting mitochondria probes in special locations—another cool reference to the 8th-grade biology concepts we all barely recall.
There is an upper limit of 25 units total, however, and it’s actually a technical limitation—there’s just too much activity in some of the later levels for more than that many player-controlled characters. Besides, that’s actually quite a few things to manage on such a small screen… and fortunately, some of the aforementioned refinement is most noticeable in this area.
That is to say, the controls feel great; if there’s one area where the game surely excels, it’s here. Scrolling around the map is as simple and pressing a direction on the D-pad, while selecting units is, quite predictably, entirely a stylus-driven affair. You can draw around a group of units to quickly select them, or take advantage of some of the clever luxuries (such as the ability to double-tap a unit and select all of its type or assign up to four custom quick-select teams). The foundation is here for a game much more complex than what’s being constructed, but whether or not that’d work in the DSiWare market is another matter entirely.
So again, casual is (for better or for worse) the name of the game. For all its fine-tuning, it’s aimed squarely at the uninitiated, meant to be easily digested with a simple learning curve. To that end, base-building has been omitted, there are but a few unit types with which to familiarize, and the first two-thirds of the game won’t likely be too much trouble for RTS experts (the last third apparently is considerably tougher to try and appeal to more competent gamers). There is also a comprehensive, focus-tested tutorial explaining even the simplest of concepts—though, also to its credit, these segments are skippable.
The lack of bases means that some other strategies had to be employed to adjust the rhythm of the battles. For instance, without some “safe” place to which to retreat, you couldn’t normally simply move in for a definitive attack on every group of enemies for fear of losing all of your troops. So the game also features a smart “escape mechanism” of sorts for your armies—meaning that getting in over your head doesn’t necessarily mean instant obliteration. If you can retreat for a bit and regenerate some health, a second go at the opposing army might translate to victory.
Again, in the final version, we’re promised eleven missions total, each lasting anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes. No multiplayer is included, though if the game is well-received, Keith expressed great interest in developing a 2v2 (with optional AI opponents) “Amoebattle Royale” with possible custom maps. To us, that sounds pretty sweet—but it remains to be seen whether it’ll ever see the light of day. In the meantime, here’s hoping that come Q3 2011 (sometime around August), Amoebattle proves to be a worthwhile title for all interested parties salivating over the idea of a true RTS (however simplistic) on a platform perfectly suited for the genre, and tragically untapped in that regard.
