The Mamoons

Half Worms, half Lemmings, half... Age of War?

Here's an interesting little game that came from what seemed like a great idea, but turned out abominable for several reasons. I've always liked games such as Age of War and Steam Brigade, and thought that adding a touch of terrain manipulation would be pretty awesome. That's really the birth of the idea, and I wanted it to be multiplayer, but didn't know how to do online multiplayer yet. So the solution? To make it turn based real time... It developed into something very strange.

Check out a video of it!

https://youtu.be/1pNJgoon6Bk

It's the kinda game where you build barrackses and let them train units to automatically walk towards the enemy base and fight everything in their path. So before anything, let's talk about the units!

Soldier

The most basic unit! Can get into a piggyback position and give other Mamoons a lift.

Commando

Carries a fat shotgun and can sustain a few hits before going down. His power is to throw a grenade which harms enemies and leaves a mark on the terrain.

Pioneer

Fragile but packs some of the highest damage in his machine gun. He's able to put blocks down, like a bridger in Lemmings.

Prospector

A beefy Mamoon with a grenade launcher. It doesn't do much damage but it can stun enemy Mamoons. His power is the opposite of the Pioneer's, he can drill blocks.

Sniper

He sports the highest range but takes a while to reload. His power allows nearby friendly Mamoons to have as much range as he does.

Knight

The strongest Mamoon. He might only carry a sword but he'll have no trouble reaching his enemies with his massive health bar. His power is to regenerate himself completely.

Each type of barracks that you put down also unlocks a special ability that uses mana. Here's a quick rundown of all the special abilities:

Jump

Lets a Mamoon jump! Very useful for reaching capture points early on.

Berzerk

A selected Mamoon becomes invincible for a short while. They'll also do double damage and recharge their power faster.

Double Time

The selected building is repaired and will start producing Mamoons at a higher rate for a duration.

Drill Strike

A drill falls from the sky which bores a hole in the ground as well as in any Mamoons that are in the way.

Snipe

The targeted Mamoon takes a whole lot of damage. I was really out of ideas by this point.

Showdown

A massive platform raises up from the ground and carries all Mamoons to the sky. From here on it's a fight to the death, whoever has Mamoons left by the end wins!

There's a few problems here and I'll talk about the most obvious one first. The fact that it keeps switching turns feels terrible, you just wish you weren't interrupted every ten seconds. It also means that one player always has an advantage, since they can put down stuff a few seconds earlier than the other player.

The next issue is the terrain manipulation. You know how in Lemmings or Worms it's sometimes a bit awkward, and there's a few pixels of terrain that get in the way? I wanted to avoid that by having the terrain made out of blocks, that way there's no uncertainties or imprecisions. It's far too easy however to give the terrain the form that suits you, since a wall that's just a little too high turns the Mamoons around and practically makes them worthless until they find another high wall. What could've been done here? Maybe the Mamoons should've only been slowed or weakened by bad terrain, not made completely useless. Then again, if the game weren't turn based then the players could always react before a Mamoon reached a bad spot.

The last big problem was a lack of balance. Over the updates, I managed to rework things so that there's balance enough between the units, except for the knights. Their special power is to heal back up to their maximum health, which is fine by itself. But there's also a special ability that makes a unit invincible and charges their power back up. Using that on a knight upgrades him to bulldozer status, and it means you've won unless your opponent is using the same tactic.

Of course, there's a method to fixing all the problems with the game, and that's to have made it single player. But that seemed like it would end up being pretty lame in the long run, and I felt like there wasn't much left to salvage with this game.