Infested Planet was just officially released last week after being on Steam’s early access program. A title that attempts to combine the fast pace and micro management of a strategy game, with the methodical thought process of a puzzle game. Unfortunately the tug of war between the two genres left me somewhat disappointed in the proceedings.
Spring Cleaning:
You play as a group of mercenaries hired to provide backup while the military is investigating an unknown planet. Upon arrival you find that the planet is swarming with mutant bugs that threaten to cover the entire planet and spread throughout the galaxy.
The entire game is played from the isometric perspective as a real time strategy. You control a squad of marines on the map and issue the basic orders as you would in a RTS. The key to winning comes from successfully upgrading your units and buildings on the map.
Build points or BP allow you to increase your troop size, build structures or outfit your guys with new weapons. The main way to earn BP is to recapture the map by taking out hives that spit out an infinite amount of bugs. The hives themselves regenerate health and nearby defensive structures, forcing you to focus fire on one at a time and capture the point to make it safe.
However, as you take over the map, the hives will mutate which unlocks some new effects such as spawning new enemy types, increasing defensive abilities and so on. That means while your side is getting more powerful the enemies are growing to match.
Figuring out your plan of attack and what troops to bring is the heart of the challenge of the game.
The beauty of Infested Planet is how the game is more about high level thinking despite the RTS micromanagement trappings.
Every unit has a set rate to their actions and unlike a traditional RTS where microing units can make a difference, here your hands are tied. It allows you to focus more on the high level thinking and positioning, rather than constant micro and rushing around.
Aliens continuously pour out of hives and despite the huge numbers can be dealt with one or two marines. Allowing you to defend while pushing out and hopefully reclaiming the map. A good analog of this type of game play would be AI Wars from Arcen Games in how the player effectively antagonizes the AI into action.
Unfortunately the big problem with Infested Planet at this time comes from this merging of RTS and puzzle design and how the latter currently is the star of the show.
Sweeping Up:
Infested Planet is by no means a bad game, but the design feels somewhat constrained and hurts replayability. The problem is that the focus of the game is more on the puzzle side of figuring out the order to take on hives while defending; leaving the strategic side lacking in giving the player interesting choices.
While there are a decent number of troops, research options and buildings to go after, it’s not like a strategy game where you have a huge variety of tactics to use. Going back to AI Wars, there is a ton of things that you can build to take on the AI with your options growing as you capture research stations.
There is so much that you really can’t build them all and instead can focus on a strategy that you like or something to directly counter the enemy. But in Infested Planet, your choices are so limited at the time that it’s less about making tough choices between side grades and more about just pure upgrades.
The campaign introduces a variety of scenarios to challenge the player’s skill at the game.
Another issue with the puzzle like design of the game comes with the story missions. While they offer a great variety in terms of challenging the player, they fall into the classic design trap whenever strategy games implement puzzle levels.
That it’s less about building a viable strategy and unit composition and more about figuring out how to deal with the “twist of the day.” Chances are you will not be prepared for the big event on a lot of the maps, but after you’ve seen it you can render it pretty much ineffective by saving the event for last and going everywhere else.
The game does offer a way of reducing the difficulty in the form of buying mission bonus units using the in game money. This is earned by playing maps win or lose and is a great way of softening up the difficulty for some of the later maps. Which I honestly can’t see another way to beat some of the more annoying campaign missions. The hive’s mutations are a great touch and dramatically mix things up, but you don’t have anywhere near the same level of variety available to you.
Now it’s important to note that the developer has promised to continue working on the game and just like AI Wars, may not be the same game in a few months. There is also a skirmish mode and weekly challenge maps that help to provide some entertainment after the campaign is done.
As it stands, Infested Planet is a great start and something to build on as the majority of my complaints are on the content side of things. With more content to branch out the potential strategies, Infested Planet can be a great introduction into RTS gameplay without the APM pressures that have become standard for the most part.
