[h1]Let’s Play the Waiting Game[/h1]
- Do you want a VERY stripped down RTS game?
- Do you know how to snowball?
- Or do you like waiting?
Then prepare to wait a long time to do just about anything if you can’t keep the ball rolling.
This game is about getting momentum going so you can get through each mission because if you lose it, you lose it hard.
This is an RTS game where you only need to do one thing, make money as fast as possible.
[u]Where It Shines[/u]
This game is about islands. You start on your own little island with just your camp. Islands can have different biomes and each biome dictates what camp can be there.
Settlements in your “kingdom” consist of just a single camp per island that allow you recruit the units associated with that type of camp. Camp design varies by faction and depends on the biome it’s built in. There are four factions, typical medieval humans, forces of Sauron-inspired dark elves, machine obsessed dwarves, and [spoiler] native American-style wild elves.[/spoiler]
The game has a variety of small details. From building construction to various idle animations, there’s usually something to watch. Unit may be seen training on dummies, drinking by a keg to drink or even dancing around a fire.
Gameplay consists of building a camp to gather gold, recruiting units, and exploring islands to place more camps. You can move islands, including your own, by using spells. You can connect to other islands by using teleporters.
You have full control over your units in a game that requires a lot of unit movement and interaction. Unit path finding is sufficient in that they know which teleporters and bridges to use to get places even if you don’t. Mostly, units idle in place, but may attack nearby enemies. They will not return to camp unless you order them to.
One of the useful features in the game is the pause button. During single player, it allows you to make any command, build, cast, recruit, or demolish whatever you need. You can even manage resources, buy skills or upgrade anything, as long as you have what’s needed. Of course, this doesn’t take effect until you unpause the game but you can queue up several actions at once.
The game simplifies your units into three classes: melee fighters, long range archers, and heavy damage casters with their design and abilities determined by what camp they were recruited from.
[u]Where It Sours[/u]
There is no story. This is just a collection of maps where you are given a goal and then just play.
Progress in the game is all dependent on momentum. You earn gold from camps. Camps are slow and give little gold per camp. To build more camps, you need to settle more islands. The more camps, the faster you earn gold. You need to expand to as many islands as fast as possible to place camps and earn more gold to build your forces. Units are high priced. If you lose any unit, you will be waiting a long time to earn enough to create a new one. Finding and capturing places that give free units is the way to go.
You only use two resources, gold and mana. All other resources you find require a special skill to be earned so it can be turned into gold or mana. Resource gathering requires a camp, only one camp per island, and to build more, you need to capture more islands. Camps generate resources very slowly.
Building your army is expensive and it can take a long time to get resources to recruit units. You can only recruit three units per camp unless you upgrade it. If your army is defeated, you will be waiting a long time to build a new one. The only way to avoid this is to capture enemy buildings that produce a few free units every so often, but these are rare and you only get up to four units from any one building.
Decentralized base mechanics makes gathering armies a pain. Each camp can only build 2-5 units and each island can only hold one camp. Units must be recruited from each camp instead of just a nearby camp. If you lose a few units, you have to find the specific camp they were from to recruit again. This could be across the map.
The only way to move between islands not connected by bridges is to use teleporters. The problem is, teleporters can fade or be destroyed. In order to combat this, you need to earn skills to keep teleporters from fading or being destroyed, or recast them if you have enough mana.
[u]Where It’s Surpassed[/u]
There are a lot of RTS games out there that are way better than this, and several of them are free. There is nothing that this game does that really makes it stand out in any way.
Driftland itself is a better game than this for the reason that it has all of the factions, buildings, and units this has and more. It also has a full campaign mode.
[u]Conclusion[/u]
I don’t recommend Nomads as it is already included in the main game.
The only thing it has going for itself is that it’s free, but it feels like a demo as you get to see all the stuff you are missing out on as you play the game.
Like this game, this is just a stripped-down version of my Driftland review.
