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[u]Rating[/u]
[b]7/10[/b]
[u]Pros:[/u]
Fun, Complex Gameplay
Excellent Physics
Procedurally generated levels force players to use a variety strategies to succeed.
[u]Cons:[/u]
No Tutorial
Special Materials are a bit difficult graphically to differentiate from the rest of the terrain
Awkward Control
Unintuitive UI
[h1]Overview[/h1]
“RECOG First Wave is a complex factory management title. The player won’t be left to create their industry peacefully however, as the reason they are building it in the first place is to defend against waves of robotic enemies named the RECOG. The player must build increasingly powerful attack drones and towers to defend against the enemies. The graphics are comprised of two complimentary artstyles which best highlights the important blocks that the player wants to focus on. There is a distinct lack of sound in the game, which works well with the fact that concentration and strategizing is necessary to best play this title. The story is a bit lacking, but it isn’t the focus and there is just enough to give the player a reason to care about why they are fighting.
[h1]Game Breakdown[/h1]
[u]Gameplay:[/u]
[b]Terrain[/b]
The terrain in the game is made up of cubes. These cubes are comprised of various minerals and materials that end in the suffix –oids, which are called oids. These are player’s main resources in the game, so digging into terrain often provides the dual purpose of collecting more resources and carving a defensible position into the terrain. Unlike other factory management games, the terrain is extremely important to a player factory and defense. Since the game has a three-dimensional grid-based playfield, it is important to make sure that the area the player is building in has enough space to extend on the z axis along with the x and y axis. As for defense, similar to other tower defense games, if enemies get to the playfield they will take the simplest route to the player’s hq block. This is why the Tower Defense concept of “Mazing”, or creating a longest route by blocking an enemy’s path with barricades and towers, is really important. This maze can also be created in three dimension. To utilize the terrain, the resource hidden inside of it must be collected.
[b]Resource Collection[/b]
The player starts off the game with five utility droids. These are the units that actually act upon the terrain and collect, build, and explore the terrain. When a player find a few pieces of terrain that they like, they must go to the excavate section of the in-game menu and then they will choose the excavate option. The player is then able to paint blocks that the drones will excavate. It is important to not mine too many resources at a time or destroy all of the connecting blocks to a large chunk of terrain. If the physics engine detects that a chunk of terrain is floating, then all of the blocks will fall apart and will rain down. This will do a ton of damage to any units located underneath. This can be a decent, last ditch strategy against enemy units, but it isn’t a good idea to let it occur to the player’s own drones. Once these blocks are located on the ground, they can be collected with the collect command which once again allows the player to paint blocks that they want to be picked up. Like many of the other menus, the excavate menu seems a bit more complex than it should be. The tooltips aren’t especially clear either. Once the player has collected some resources, it is time to build some industry.
[b]Industry[/b]
Industry starts off simple initially, but quickly grows to be complex. Like most other factory management games, the first building that must be created is storage. It is here that all of the resources required to create complex parts are stored. Storage is also the place that the factories will directly pull from when they want to build these parts. Complex part factories require small factories and these factories will feed into depots which build the actual machines. One of the most important objects to be built are defensive towers and defense drones.
[b]Defense[/b]
As the player builds up there industry, they will have to build depots. The RECOG will detect these depots and will start to send waves that are increasingly powerful so that they can destroy the player’s outpost. The first line of defense a player has is defense drones. There are 5 types that increase in power as their technology is researched through the proper industrial factory. When a new wave is sent, the attack drones will fly into the air and will fire their equipped weapons at the invaders. This light show is quite fun to watch, but I will warn that anyone epileptic may want to be careful. To turn the tide of battle, towers can be built to send supportive weapon salvos. For example, the missile silo is able to cause large, area of effect explosions in the air to damage enemies. Other towers will shoot only when the enemies are closer to the ground, presumably after all of a player’s defense drones are destroyed.
[b]Overall:[/b]
This is a fun factory management title that suffers from the fact that it doesn’t contain a single shred of tutorial. Due to this complexity, many people may be scared away from this title. If this is your favorite genre however, I would recommend sticking the rough start out because there is a lot of fun packed into this title.
[u]Story:[/u]
The story is short, but gives the player a reason to care about their mission full of mining and robots. The player is playing a simulation of a mission to save humanity. A group of robots called the RECOG are trying to destroy humanity, so it is up to the player to build a self-sufficient defensive outpost to defend against their hordes. Thankfully, this is only a simulation with many scientists observing the player. Once the simulation is lost, then the player is kicked out of the simulation and the mission.
[u]Sound:[/u]
The sound design for this game is surprisingly quiet. Considering the complexity of this title, I’m not surprised that the developers, LozMarblz Inc., decided to create a more silent title. This removes the potential for distraction and creates a very zen ambiance. The game isn’t devoid of sound though, as robots working will occasionally make sound. This is probably to remind the player that the game is running, which is helpful because the player wants to pause quite a bit in the early game.
[u]Graphics:[/u]
The graphical style is mainly comprised of two artstyles. The world is made up of cube, voxel-like blocks. These blocks then have basic textures on their sides. The second artstyle used is a realistic sci-fi theme that contrasts quite well against the bland colored voxel blocks. Even though the second artstyle is more detailed and realistic, most of the machines that the player uses are square. This is likely due to the fact that the game is played on a three-dimensional plane and it is easier to see cubes on the game’s grid. The small utility and attacking drones however are not squares and are the only objects that are spherical in nature. The physics engine that works on the graphics works quite well and watching the blacks become small and then bounce around is quite satisfying. Unfortunately, the terrain graphics all look mostly the same, so it can be difficult to differentiate different oids and minerals from each other initially. Some might also dislike the fact that the main color is overwhelmingly brown.
[u]Performance:[/u]
The game performs quite well. Even at 4x speed, my computer never had any trouble processing my utility bot’s many actions. The physics engine acting upon blocks also works well and it didn’t mess with my FPS.
