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Swords & SoldiersWiiWare Hands-OnBy Nik Wouters - 26th August 2008 19:23
The potential of WiiWare is obvious. Small teams of developers can make their game available for millions of gamers, for relatively low costs. One of those teams that think maybe their game is going to take the gaming world by surprise is the Dutch studio Ronimo. They struck fame by coming up with the original idea for De Blob, which has since been picked up by THQ and will be released on Wii this coming October in Europe. Ten to fifteen people at the company are now working on "Swords and Soldiers", a WiiWare game set to be released later this year. We met up with the creators during the Games Convention in Leipzig to talk about their ambitious plans and, of course, to get our greedy hands on their colorful game. Swords & Soldiers is, according to the developers, a "side-scrolling RTS". Basically you have a 2D battlefield with one team on both sides, and it's your task to wipe out the other team, by deploying the right forces at the right time.
To play the game you’ll only need the Wii Remote. See those buttons at the top of the screen? Those are your main fighting tools. First of all you'll need money to make new troops. Those women carrying bags will do that part for you (how emancipated). You can purchase more of these workers, or you can invest your money directly into new soldiers. You can do that with the next three buttons. The most important thing to remember is that your soldiers fight on their own. When they've been built, they'll move automatically to the enemy base and fight anyone in their path. Here's where the tactics jump in. For example, if you and your opponent deploy an axeman at the same time, they'll beat the crap out of each other and both drop dead. If you put out a stronger, but more expansive "hammerguy" he'll put the axeman to sleep and walk onward to the enemy base, but his health will have dropped a bit. To win the battle you'll have to get one of your guys in the enemy base. As you can probably tell from the screens, this is in no way an easy task. To help you a bit, magic is also present. That’s what the last four buttons are for. For example, there is a "Hammer of Thor" attack which you can deploy anywhere on the map to damage troops; with other spells you can slow down troops or regenerate health. To get you more involved in the fights there are also different elements on the battlefield you can use to your advantage. There are assigned places where you can set up a fortress and settle some guys in. There are also different paths your brave men can take. In the map we played there was an area where fighters could go uphill, or walk past it. By hitting an arrow-shaped switch on the field your men will take a different route (and maybe avoid a fight with a bloodthirsty opposing army).
Eventually mastering the game comes down to resource management and making the right tactical choices. Do you want to invest money in new spells, or in stronger fighters? What kind of fighters is your opponent sending at you and what is your response going to be? These are important choices you'll have to make during a game. As you can see from the screens Swords & Soldiers has a really distinctive visual style - dare we mention Castle Crashers - which makes it quite attractive and easy on the eye. We were presented with two different factions, the Vikings and the Aztecs, but in the final game there will also be a third – kept secret for now. The three races have different units and spells. The Vikings are for people who like brute force; to win with the Aztecs you'll need a more tactical approach. For example the Aztecs are capable of brainwashing enemy soldiers and getting them to join your side. They can also sacrifice their own units to make other soldiers stronger. The game will come with campaign modes for all three factions and a split-screen multiplayer mode. We know what you're thinking now. How about online? Of course we asked the developers that same question, but unfortunately their response was that they’re "not including online multiplayer" in Swords & Soldiers. "If we were to include online that would almost double our development time. By not including online we can bring Swords & Soldiers to WiiWare for a relatively low price. Maybe it's an option for a possible sequel."
No online was a bit of a bummer for us, because it seems like perfect fit, but at least this means we're getting the game this year. Swords & Soldiers looks to be coming along nicely. We haven't got to experience a complete fight in the game yet, so it's hard to say if battles are going to be as tactical as the game makers tell us they’re going to be. More playtime with the title will hopefully give us a clearer view on that. We’ll report back to you when we've got more information on this title, but for now enjoy these lovely screenshots. © Copyright by N-Europe Comments
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Swords & Soldiers System: Wii Genre: RTS Developer: Ronimo Games Publisher: Ronimo Games Release Dates:  TBA Q2 2009 15.05.2009 15.05.2009Memorycard: N/A Multiplayer: 2 Last updated on: Aug 26th 2008 |
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