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[knucracker]

Defense, RTS,... you've played them all?  Well, there's another and you've not seen anything like it.  Creeper World has just been released and is available at knucklecracker.com

In Creeper World the enemy flows across the map like a giant organic mass.  It will flow into valleys, around obstacles, and surround your base.  The high ground matters in this innovative Defense/RTS game.  Designed to be casually playable 5-20 minutes at a time, Creeper World features 20 exciting story missions, 25 conquest missions, and 10 special ops missions.

Highly innovative and fresh, bring your tactical mind and a bag of popcorn... because once you start, you won't be able to take your eyes off this game.

[MultiPigeon]

Man, I read 'Creeper World' as 'Creepier World'. That and the words 'giant organic mass' made me picture this game as sort of the Survivial Horror game of the RTS genre. I'm somewhat disapointed but I'm not really either a survival horror or RTS fan.

[knucracker]

Yeah, the Creeper in "Creeper World" is a slight reference to the Red Creeper or Red Weed in the War of the Worlds.  But in the game the Creeper isn't red and has nothing to do with Mars

Creeper World also sits somewhere between RTS and defense games.  I still don't know which way of categorizing it will get the most exposure (or if it matters).

I did design it to be casually playable with a number of things that are atypical for RTS.  For one, the base and the weapons aren't really separate from each other.  Your base serves as a way to get energy, and as something you have to defend, and as something that you use in your offensive.  On another front, in most missions you never need to build more than a handful of units.  There is never really a case where you need a giant army of units to do anything.  In this sense it is close to a defense game, or to a RTT (Real Time Tactical) game.

And lastly, I've really come to dislike RTS games that put the camera like 2 inches above the battlefield.  Sliding around by screen bumping like crazy can get old.  So in Creeper World I wanted a game that put the tactics and strategy of the experience all in your face all at once.... a difficult challenge when married with the other constraints.

I've play tested it on a range of people (some of which aren't RTS gamers) and have gotten positive responses.  So don't let the RTS label scare you too much

Thanks for the feedback.

[MultiPigeon]

Oh, I wouldn't call what I'm saying feedback. Just an interesting mistake from my side.

It's great that you replied and told more about the game and your thoughts behind designing it. The problem with this thread, I think, is that it comes of as too much of a mindless commercial. I'm not saying that you shouldn't advertise your game on this board. You should just do it with more passion. I'm no expert on these things but maybe you should try editing your first post. Show some pictures, link you gameplay video, talk more about the game and about the proccess behind creating it. I know most of these things you can get just by visiting the games site but as of now, there isn't much in your post that encourages people to follow the link.

Personally, I think you should visit The Obligatory Introduce Yourself Thread .
Tell people about yourself and your goals. Why is it that you make video games? What are you currently working on? What are your skills? How's your thought process? Things like that.

While TIGForums may be a great place to show off you games, it's very hard to get attention with a blank slate.

[knucracker]

Ok, so Creeper World was designed with the following things in mind:
1: Keep the gameplay relatively casual.  No 3 hour missions.  Most missions should be playable in around 5-20 minutes.
2: No bump scrolling with the camera like 2 inches above the battlefield.  Also, no need to zoom in and out to map hop everywhere.
3: Minimum micromanagement of everything.
4: No redundant units or structures.  Everything needs to have a unique purpose.  No reason to have a hundred units when 5 would do.
5: A unique enemy.
6: Make it all fit in a window so it can be played on the desktop while at work.

Taken together, this was quite a challenge.  It required experimenting with many, many ideas.  For me, the most interesting point was to develop a fairly unique enemy.  Everybody has always (for the most part) focused on enemies that are in one form or another just like you.  They are units like tanks or monsters and they come at you and you shoot back.  Discrete enemies basically.  I call the enemy in Creeper World an "Organic Enemy".  It flows around the map... when you are attacked it isn't with a bunch of discrete enemies that you blow up one at a time or in small groups.  Instead it's as if someone poured a viscous fluid onto the map.  Now this leads to some interesting strategies for defense...  For one, you can hold back this enemy in one area, but it will flow around you and encompass you from all directions.  For another, terrain height matters a great deal since this organic enemy will flow downhill and fill in valleys first.

Now other than the enemy, the way I chose to meet the other requirements pretty much has to be seen to be understood.  I've got a screenshot below that shows a game in later stages (after about 10 minutes of game play).

The green area is the area that you are getting your one resource from: energy.  The blue area is the bad guy.  In this map it is coming from the top edge of the screen.  In other maps it comes from different sides or from areas within the map (like a crater, etc.)

This screen shot shows a number of blasters that are incinerating the Creeper as well as a couple of mortars that are lobbing shells into creeper pools.  And there are also three drone bombers on bombing runs.  Besides that there are energy storage structures, speed enhancers, and energy reactors in this screen shot.

The little red-ish circles moving along the paths in this map are ammunition packets leaving your City and heading to rearm your weapons.  The ammunition follows the paths made by your base as you expand.  They will always follow the shortest path, so the way your base is designed can make a logistical difference to your front line.

I could go on and on, but seeing it in motion also helps.  There's a link to the youtube video at my site:  knucklecracker.com

Lastly, I'm pretty pleased that such a compact game has provided a medium for such interesting tactical and strategic thought.  I've watched a number of people play, and the ability to plan ahead and organize your thoughts (all in around 10 minutes!) makes a difference it how players perform.  Logistics, redundancy, high ground, consumption pacing, targeted tactical efforts.... they all come into play.  And (for me anyway) they all come into play in a game that doesn't take all day to play and isn't hard to learn.

Here's the shot:

[Lynx]

Just a thought from looking at the screenshot, maybe it would read better with a discrete edge instead of appearing to be a cloud rolling across the map? 

[Corpus]

4 posts. 3 of them are concerned entirely with Creeper World; the other, the obligatory Introduce Yourself thread post, also makes reference (and links) to it.

I think you're missing the point.



EDIT: Unlocked on the condition that you get involved.