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Island Planet! Review

Rating:

Another in our series of Ludum Dare #17 reviews, Island Planet! is a grand idea that suffers from lack of polish, from lack of time.

Full Review

Unnecessary as it may be, I always feel the need to preface the Ludum Dare #17 reviews by saying these games were made in 48 hours. It takes me 48 hours to start the defragger on my computer so I have to give these devs a lot of credit.

Island Planet!, like so many of these quickly-made games, is a great concept: conquer the world with your army of tanks and try to blow up your opponent's tanks. It is a combination of Risk and Scorched Earth. Each round is divided into three phases: place, capture, attack. Just like Risk you can opt to capture new territory, place new armies (in this case, a single tank) or attack. The attack phase is where the Scorched Earth allusion comes from in that you attack by first setting your trajectory -- the targeting line rotates and you stop it by pressing the X key -- then setting how much power you will use on your shot.

It's a fun combination of well-known gameplay elements but rather poorly executed. The capture phase seems haphazard with no real clear direction or strategy. Attacking feels random at best; no matter how hard you try to aim properly and shoot the opposing tank it seems to take a great deal of luck to make a successful attack.

The world itself is what drew me to try the game out of its 200 or so competitors. It is nothing flashy but the planetary graphics look cool and the random topography is nice to look at. You can rotate the planet at will to get a full view of the world, which is a nice touch but aiming your shot in the attack phase is still awkward no matter how you angle your view.

Island Planet! represents the best and worst of these kinds of competitions: grand ideas poorly executed for lack of time. The originality shown in the conception of these games is so promising, one hopes that the developers will get to take some more time with it and produce a truly fun game.

Voting is still open for the 17th Ludum Dare competition, so have a look at Island Planet! here.

Posted by Derek Kamal on April 30, 2010 Comments (0)