Arcen and Skyward Collapse had been on my radar, but just barely. I certainly hadn't been waiting for this game nor planned to buy it. So you could say I stumbled here by accident or something. (For more details, I was actually planning to get a new strategy game, was browsing Steam and thinking of Stardrive, got scared by its price and alleged betaness, saw Skyward and now I'm here. Poor Zero Sum)
Anyways, Skyward Collapse turned out to be a really pleasant surprise. Strategy game where basic mode of operation is not 'subdue and dominate' (which I dislike, but have come to accept as staple of the genre), but more interesting and personally appealing 'sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, attempt to ride it and try to maintain balance'. I actually try to play like that in other strategy games as well, with the expected disastrous results, so it's nice to come across a game with a style of play that feels like it's tailored just for me.
Visuals were fine, except for the lack of unit animation, which I realized I didn't want after all when I saw how many units there would be on the table at later game, and maybe the ruined city tiles, with which I just got used to after a while. Music was great. Maybe I'd rearrange the tracks so that only some of them would play during certain ages. 'Darker' tracks for the later ages. I felt really off, when during Age of Gods minotaur and frost giant armies were roaming the obsidian plains and that SimCity-like track came up.
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I've played three games so far after the tutorial.
Game 1: hard/hard/hard score at end: 79,795 with multipliers: 1,037,335 version 1.001 and/or 1.002
Game 2: hard/expert/insane score at end: 114,370 with multipliers: 2,287,400 version 1.002
Game 3: expert/insane/insane score at end: 71,080 with multipliers: 1,990,240 version 1.003
Plains map and 90 turns each time.
Here's game 1 at turn 35:
http://i.imgur.com/7gUytzd.jpgBoth capitals have been razed to the ground. Bandits had been pestering Aker for quite some time, no one powerful enough bothered to show up to wipe them out and the bastards even dared to take the upgrades which were meant for my guys. But now it's just that lone oxybele left, soon Aker would be safe again, except for that Ultima coming in a couple of turns... Cities that it let live were be Jorsalaborg and Donoda. And couple of turns later there was this woe that dropped the tiles just outside the city limits. It made Jorsalaborg quite interesting place: city in the middle of obsidian plains and the center of the map with a moat of void around it.
game 1, turn 90:
http://i.imgur.com/eIlnqMl.jpg"Hey, Norns make everything free, let's try Yggdrasil and that purple cauldron at same time, and as many frost giants as we have actions, since they're free too!"
game 2, turn 40:
http://i.imgur.com/otfqiuj.jpgI seem to have these situations at least once in each game, almost every tile occupied by an unit. "Why let good monster pandemonium go to waste, let's plop down Yggdrasil." Top right has my staple defensive structure: town hall at the end of a narrow land bridge, with woodcutter and quarry behind it to give immunity to town hall and resources for the next similar installation somewhere else on the map.
game 2, turn 90:
http://i.imgur.com/tTyCEqm.jpgQuite a lot of the monster pandemonium forces 50 turns back are still left, most notably those Norse cerberuses. Norse dominate again, but there was particularly one Greek dark elf with adamantite who stalled them quite a while. I actually didn't know elves could use it, I had planned to give it to some spearman, when she rushed in to grab it (you can actually see her in the previous pic in the top right corner in front of the city I talked about) and then proceeded all the way to the center of the map while demolishing everything red in her way.
game 3, turn 23:
http://i.imgur.com/0bQTNEb.jpgInitial towns would be around the central plain as much as possible, so that's where the bandit keeps would mostly pop up also. Then I'd plop down labyrinth and minotaurs would wipe out the bandits and then proceed towards towns to rack up enough points to get to the next age, meanwhile I'd build towns further out, out of the immediate reach of the minotaurs. Too bad the serial killer decided to take out all the norse minotaurs.
game 3, turn 41:
http://i.imgur.com/gx8gf31.jpgRebuilding Norse army at Thule. All archers, because Skaddi. (I'm not sure if intended, but the archers were not completely free with Skaddi, they sure were being built even if there was no resources, but if there was resources, they'd use them.) They were loaded up on adamantite and Pandora's box and were ready to take on the world (and Yggdrasil), but what's with the moon? It's like there's a bad moon on the rise. I had thought bandits to be rather harmless, but yeah... this could have been quite disastrous woe, hadn't it been for Ares and his serpent. Still meant having all blue and no red units for a while, but that's better than all yellow. Aker in right side of central plain was curiously saved by a blue infantry guy with blood lust. He decided to climb on the top of town hall and sit there until the minotaurs got bored and buggered off.
Game 3, turn 90:
http://i.imgur.com/onVhQC1.jpgMidgard's Convulsion and that Skaddi's mountain raising ability make for quite messy map. Score target was really hard to hit, I think I got it at turn 88 or 89. Mostly because blue lost all its resources (which were immense, boosted by Athene's Harmonia) due to woe, just before it was time to release the final carnage. All the Greek god tokens were left unused (they were off cooldown again), because there just wasn't enough time to produce enough moon- and sunstones. In retrospect, that's when I should have used Hebe (assuming the resource-robbing woe isn't catastrophic, not sure about that).
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Anyways, good job on the game Arcen. It certainly has sold me on AI War and Valley 2 as well (just need to decide which one first...)
