AI War II: Return of the Mimes

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > AI War II: Return of the Mimes

nessin: Feb 7, 2010

Quellar posted:

Arcen is the games studio I love to hate, everything they make is so weirdly horrible...

AI War is considered their best game, and I think it is a fun game, but it's dominated by some really questionable design choices like how the AI mostly interacts with you by sending waves of troops like in a tower defense that always go in a straight line towards your home base. Reading through this thread This AI is Awesome might make you think that the AI is the best in any game ever, but in reality the challenge of the game comes from the fact that the computer player just has many more units than you and when it decides to attack it does so by going in a straight line towards your buildings, not trying to avoid your mines or turrets at all. It also takes over 4 hours of real-time to build a fighting force that has any chance of making progress against the AI. The graphics are nice and clean pixel art, but just look at the menus, they are a total mess. The person that designed this game is totally out of control and should consider taking a graphic design course.

The AI is great because of the strategic elements, not the tactical parts. The interaction you have with it to control it's growth and how it responds to what path you take is why it's considered pretty good. Just saying the AI has more units than you and throws them in continuous waves is disingenuous and very misleading. UI is pretty bad though.

quote:

A Valley without Wind has some of the worst graphics I've ever seen in any video game and the gameplay is somehow even worse... All you do is wander around hideous randomly generated dungeons and upgrade your projectile weapons with no goal or end in sight. It seems like they wanted to make Terraria but just totally failed on every level.

A Valley Without Wind does look bad, and I could never get into the gameplay, but it's hardly the worst graphics ever. Also you've described the kind of game it was trying to emulate so I'd say it was more not your game than a game without a goal.

doctorfrog posted:

Looks like I better drag my butt up and make a Kickstarter account. I was really hoping not to ever have to make one.

Was kinda hoping for a more substantial set of fixes for AIW, but all things considered they should probably focus on AIWII, Kickstarter or no Kickstarter.

Man, if AI War II is a flop as a game or as a financial success, it's gonna break my heart. It's been better said in this thread, the indie market is not what it was when AI War first came out.

They were up front that this patch was to try and get peoples attention on the Steam page in the hopes they'll read the news and see the Kickstarter announcement. That is why it's barebones and short.

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Three Moves Ahead had Chris Park on this week and it's a pretty amazing listen so I'd recommend everyone go listen to it. Even if you're not super interested in AI War he goes into a lot of detail about the risks and challenges in his other games, trying to get this game out there, issues other devs have faced that he's talked to, and just a whole slew of other stuff. Unfortunately I can't link to it because my work blocks the page but it's worth the google search and casual listen in the background if nothing else.

nessin fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Oct 20, 2016

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > AI War II: Return of the Mimes