Obligatory links:
Developer page:
http://www.frozensynapse.com/index.htmlSteam page:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/98200/TotalBiscuit's review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJrUY27O0YThe RPS article (well, one of them):
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/19/preview-frozen-synapse/I'm betting this game will appeal to AIW fans. It's a turn based strategy game. I'm told it's kind of like the planning stage of the old Rainbow 6 games, but I never really played those, so I can't back that up. You have a small squad of something like 3-6 guys on a highly stylized tron-esque map, and your job is to give them the orders that they will carry out over the next 5 seconds. (In the game's fiction, your troops are vat-grown clone-like lifeforms with no real higher order thinking, only capable of executing the orders that you send to them) And these orders are in depth. Through a fairly simple and straightforward mouse driven system, you can tell a unit "Turn this way, run to this cover, duck and wait for 1.5 seconds, stand up and shoot to your left, run towards this wall while ignoring the enemy that you'll see, then aim to your right once behind cover." Not all strings of orders are going to be that long of course, but that's an idea.
While you're doing this, your opponent is also setting up their turn. All that either side knows is what the units are doing right at this frozen instant. Once both sides have delivered all their orders and confirmed them, then and only then does the action play out, and you get to find out if you cleverly aimed in the right direction to take out the enemy sniper, or if you completely missed a shotgun-toting baddie who run up to ventilate your cranium from behind. Maybe so, but now you get another round to try and even the odds. It's entirely possible for someone to take out all but one of the opposing team in one good round, only to have the single remaining unit pull a rambo and win the round all on his own. There's nothing really randomized about the combat, so you almost always know that units behind cover will take out units in the open, units that are aiming win over those that are snap firing, units that are stationary win over those that are moving and so on and so on. You can also test out scenarios by giving orders to the opposing units, and then play them out to see what might happen. Of course you might guess completely wrong, so it's better to try out multiple scenarios and then cross your fingers.
There's no time pressure on the games, so you can literally start a game, make your first round of moves, and then leave all day and come back to find out what happened. Multiplayer is unusual in this game, in that you might be playing 5 or 10 games at a time. You just make your moves in a game and confirm them and go on to the next game. Then later you come back around and see if your game has progressed to the next round.
There's also an extensive single player campaign with a pretty good cyber-punk backstory. I'm playing through that right now, because the multiplayer servers are currently crumbling under the weight of all the people who just bought this on Steam. The devs weren't really expecting this many people to jump on board. That is one slight black mark on the game right now, but I'm completely confident that they'll get that cleared up in a few days. Another odd thing about it is that you can't purchase a single copy of the game. The way they spin it is that you buy one copy and get one free, although I feel that's just sort of clever wording. It is 20 bucks currently (on a sale price) which is just a tiny bit high for your average indie game, at least on Steam. But that 20 bucks nets you two copies. Kind of a clever way to build their player base, really.
Any way, I've gone on long enough. I'm sure anyone with an interest in this type of game is probably already mashing the 'buy' button by now.
