Long before the term SRPG was coined, Turn based tactical games have enchanted and entralled audiences. For those of us that gravitate to those wonderful grids and top down views, there have been many games over the years have influenced and informed what this genre is capable of. The most recent tactical game I have had a chance to play, Pocket God vs Desert Ashes , is an upcoming game I’ve had the good fortune to play in advance of it’s release on wednesday of this week.
Pocket God vs Desert Ashes boasts a really unique theme that is in keeping with Pocket God($0.99) developer Bolt Creative’s selection of games. What you end up with is a really great tropical island backdrop with bright and expressive characters. You wouldn’t think that aliens (from the Desert Ashes side) and islanders would really make a great combination, and, well… yeah you might be right. The story props up the game enough to play without falling apart, but if you go looking for any real substance I think your quest may end up in failure. To be honest though, you don’t need an amazing story line to make a top notch SRPG. I can’t say its as good as a steak, but the theme serves up a thin candy shell capable of delivering the rest of the game.
I’m sitting here, after streaming some of PGvDA on mobcrush, kind of figuring out what the fastest tactic would be to wipe out a map full of aliens and have my pygmy forces claim victory in the tropical paradise my forces call their homeland. Up until this point I was just able to wade in with the most expensive units being shielded by one or two fodder units and easy sweep out the map I was playing on. Now things are different, a new campaign means new enemy forces I have to contend with that are capable of destroying one of my units with a single attack.
Deriving and implementing new strategies is a huge part of why SRPGs are so popular. Once I’ve cracked the code and made some headway in a fight, I can sit back and muster my forces for the next big push. While PGvDA has relatively little in the area of truly challenging gameplay, the game will definitely make you earn wins as you progress. Rather than losing, I seem to end up just winning much slower when I am faced with new enemies. So with the 10 different units you can summon in game, I find myself deploying each one to find the best combination of power and value to keep pumping out as many as I can.
The game has some very basic factory type buildings, currency generating buildings and of course a base of operations. The first challenge I usually undertake when entering a fight is getting control of any midddle ground buildings. I know I will need normal pygmy types to do the capturing, but I also must be sure to bring strong units capable of protecting them while they capture things.
The first campaign is basically a large tutorial. I went in and spammed the most expensive units and was able to win easily. Without different AI settings, I was happy to see the difficulty ramp up in the second campaign. The level of challenge for that first campaign is not really enough to warrant suggesting one unit over another, but the Booga unit, a zombie-like pygmy, is probably my favorite with projectiles made from the heads of other Boogas.
After abandoning my Booga or bust strategy, I found that the Dodo bird unit(that use fecal matter as their projectile) and the Moon Witch unit are great at taking down flying enemies that give other units major trouble. I like to think that this game holds to the “right tool for the job" idea where there is no universally superior unit and using them all together is probably going to get you the best results.
Pocket God vs Desert Ashes drops this wednesday. I am hoping to see another campaign or two soon if not by release time to really help bolster the amount of content in the game. It has a good base that doesn’t break much new ground or take many chances, but still has a charm unique enough to warrant some attention.
