Turn-based strategy is not ‘œconsole cool’. Apart from the decidedly hands-on Worms series which has found itself heading download services with bombastic aplomb, the back and forth chess effect of tactical watch and waits are in decline. W!Games, the awkwardly punctuated Netherlands-based studio most famous for delivering the equine delights of My Horse and Me (sequeled, but never bettered) to the Wii-waggling masses, fly in the face of demographic reason with their sophomore release. Greed Corp looks to lay the foundations of the team’s sprawling Mistbound IP, purporting to become a ‘œrich, fictional world’, but here launched using the unquestionably awkward genre of turn-based, hexagonal strategy.

Promising innovation and depth through constant threat of teetering vertical collapse, does Mistbound’s industrial revolution create the backdrop for compelling strategy or merely flavour Greed Corp‘s somewhat dated underlying mechanic? Thanks to W!Games for providing a code for review.

Stage 0: TUTORIAL

I whizzed through Greed Corp’s tutorial. Each time control returned to my hand, a little window popped up to assist in decision making. While I was of course “learning” to perform actions appropriate to situation and battle context, after 15 minutes and cheery fanfare, my string of triggered quick-time events had taught me precisely nothing about the workings of the game. Glossing over what seemed a stunted, box out technicality, I proceeded to fail the second level and first mission proper some five times. What were the limits on unit production and movement? Does building, loading and firing a canon really take three entire turns? Why was the so called supporting fund raising in peaks and troughs? Do multiple harvesters have any bearing across shared tiles?

Returning to the hand-held, educatory drag of stage one, I read each and every message with eagle eyes, gently resisting the gamer’s urge to hammer the A button as if this were some hexagonal approximation of Track and Field. Leaving for war now with at least perfunctory knowledge of unit types, I failed three times further before saving face and knocking the remaining enemy walker and armory from their single, crumbling perch. Success, but bungled, accidental success.

Bitches Brew

Framing Greed Corp‘s aural profile with a throwaway handful of cyclic, smokey jazz licks and falling into the Indie Channel trap of presenting each skirmish’s textual backing in Lithos Pro, one of the holy trinity of default, lifeless fonts (stablemates Times New Roman and Comic bloody Sans), the game’s interface exists as serviceable rather than inspired. Incidentals, while altered nicely by faction choice, grate through repetition, especially when triggered during the frequent pockets of trumpet-less, whistling silence. Greed Corp‘s concept art remains pleasingly mechanical yet cuddly throughout, though this is something that doesn’t quite translate through to the active playfield’s miniscule and largely inanimate placeholders.

However, immediate package impressions and newcomer difficulty aside, by the close of the first six stage leg of the campaign, the restrictions of a map’s geography and risk versus reward mechanic of militant harvesting become pleasingly noted considerations rather than multi-tasking irritancies. More than almost any game I’ve played in recent memory, the informed, elucidatory click, whereby the player begins to grasp all operative systems within their own comfort sphere, is not only present, but unfortunately divisive in an individual’s willingness to press on and reap Greed Corp‘s merits. It is very difficult to recommend Greed Corp on the basis of it’s opening hours, yet impossible to switch off once flanking hexagonal strategies and tactically banked carriers start to become second nature.

The campaign, essentially 24 battles of increasing tactical difficulty, casts the player as each of the four factions for six sequential stages. While the “story”, present in a wall of capitalised text prior to deployment, paints them all in individual light, other than the aforementioned aesthetic changes, each plays identically to the last. It seems strange that the developer chose to exclude play variables via side choice. Perhaps the flat line credentials of each are intentional to keep a level playing field online, though over the course of two weeks of daily matchmaking, I failed to pair with another player. A devastating blow for a game which at the time had been released for just under one week.

A few other points worth mentioning:

• The cursor notifies the player as to the height of each land mass, though its mystically small and unexplained rotary symbol can evade even the most observant player.
• The achievements are hard as bloody nails. Beyond the generous length of the campaign itself, the graded asks, through combination of luck and skill, can take hours to procure.
• The music, though sparse, is irritatingly catchy. Both partner and I traversed the flat mouth-trumpeting for the entire period of review.
• Why is there no means of fast forwarding opponent’s turns? And why does the camera insist on focusing on empty squares while the computer diligently arms a three pronged attack just off screen?

Greed Corp can be great fun, but only after the opening drag of learning and re-learning what would appear, glancing at its reduced unit list, to be a “simplistic” stab at turn-based strategy. While word is quiet on which genre will next attempt to further the narrative arc of Mistbound (suggestions: rhythm action, ascii rogue-a-like or bullet-hell shmup), its starter, while unconventional, turns out to be a surprisingly solid title if given the time.

You should play this game if’¦

You occupy a middle road of strategy gamers, favouring somewhat simplistic action replete with deceptively deep tactical implication.

Final Score

Like a walnut refusing to buckle under nutcracker strain, the internal complexities eventually make up for raw, splintered hands.

(What does this score mean?)