• Attack of the Earthlings
  

  12 hours playtime

  21 of 37 achievements

This is a turn-based tactics game. You start each level with only the main unit (you lose if it dies), but when you kill enemies, you can eat their corpses to gain points you can spend to spawn and mutate other units. It’s also partly a stealth game since enemies patrol predetermined routes (though not necessarily predictable ones) and only attack you if you end up in their very visible vision cone. However, they will break from their patrol if you do something that causes noise near them (the game will always show you how many spaces away the noise will reach). Also, with the exception of the game’s two bosses, each enemy can be taken out in one hit as long as you use the right mutation for your unit (though your units can also be taken out in 1-2 hits).

The game is pretty easy for the most part. In fact, I’d say most of the challenge comes from what the game never tells you that other tactics games would, like how far enemies can move. My biggest issue is that every level has fog of war, and while this isn’t too bad at first, it ends up hiding new things the game introduces until it’s too late (like the enemies with a full-circle view-cone in level 4). Notably, level 5 tasks you with killing enemies before they reach a destination, but it neither tells you where the enemies will spawn nor where their destination is; you just have to react and hope you’re in a good enough position when they do spawn. The boss at the end of level 6 is more what I’d expect as a challenge from a tactics game: the whole room is visible (no fog) and you have to use your knowledge of your units to kill a unit with more health and attacks than normal (I did like how the game always tells you how many times a unit can attack in one turn). Thing is, the game never tells you that if you blind a unit, then attack said unit, it gets unblinded and counterattacks you. Even though the game penalizes you for losing units during missions by lowering the amount of upgrade points you get, I don’t see how I’m supposed to beat that boss without losing a unit (then again, if Nitrome’s Small Fry has taught me anything, it’s that just because a game encourages something doesn’t mean it’s possible).

Also, a minor nitpick, but even if you’re using a controller instead of a mouse, it’ll still slide a pointer over the level instead of having the traditional “cursor that snaps to each square on the board.” I wouldn’t have even brought this up if it weren’t for a couple times where the pointer didn’t register that I could attack a noncombatant (the samples in level 4 and the switches in level 7), and I feel like this bug wouldn’t have happened with the traditional setup.

This one’s hard for me to recommend. On one hand, there aren’t many overt flaws, but on the other hand, it’s kinda easy and boring, with most of what little challenge there is coming from the game not telling you stuff.