Over the weekend I was a little addicted to a casual flash game by Art Logic called Epic War 4 and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Art Logic was a games company based in Indonesia, a country I occasionally visit as my wife hails from Jakarta.
I’ll be honest and admit that I haven’t played – nor intend playing - the game since the weekend but this is to be expected for a casual game. If I wanted to be absorbed into a game there’s plenty of fodder on my Xbox or PS3 (Fallout New Vegas anyone?). What I can say without a doubt is that I enjoyed those hours that I did spend with the game – marshalling my troops before sending them forth to slaughter and be slaughtered.
The game is about building your army of fantasy creatures and destroying an opposing castle. I won’t go into the rules of arranging your units suffice it to say that all units have strengths and weaknesses and which ones you choose will impact heavily on whether you win or get your ass served up on a platter at the victory banquet of your enemy.
Beating a level requires you to destroy the enemy castle by pounding your way through the troops that the enemy throws in your way. Completing a level will in turn net you some shiny which can then be used to unlock new units or upgrade existing ones.
You as the player play as a general and as such you have a selection of spells at your disposal. These spells run the gamut from damage and healing, to utility spells to increase unit effectiveness. A cleverly timed spell (or five) can change the course of the battle.
Once you are satisfied that your castle destroying task force is unbeatable you throw them into the breach and watch the blood gout from the cloven bodies of your enemies…
…or promptly get your ass handed to you by a super cheating angel with a bevy of medic sprites...Grrrrrr! Die angel die!
As far as strategy goes, once you have deployed your heroes of castle bashing awesomeness you’ve got a few commands you can issue such as “Assault” (all out attack), “Retreat”, and “Fall Back”. This is all very nice but I quickly fell into the rut of building my units to capacity then going all out no-retreat-no-surrender style. Rinse and repeat. Not that this wasn’t fun for a couple of days but after unlocking all the units and beating all the levels on“Normal” I had no desire to try and beat the game on “Hard”.
I liked the art style with the variety of different units available and the feeling of progression as you unlocked and upgraded units.
I felt the strategic part of actual combat to be lacking and the responsiveness of units in the heat of battle to be too slow. This is more than made up for by the strategic elements involved in selecting which units to compose your castle razing squad.
I would certainly recommend this to people who have exactly the same tastes as me.
