Warpips is a bit of an odd duck, to be sure. It is one of those games that almost seems to avoid categorisation, with a dash of an RTS and a smidge of resource management included.
Developed by Skirmish Mode Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment, the blurb on the Xbox store page says “Warpips is what would happen if a classic strategy game and a tug-of-war game had a baby made out of tanks and napalm” and to be fair, I can’t think of a better way to describe it.
Warpips is presented in a retro style, just for a change. The graphics are pixelated, almost 8-bit in the way they look, whilst the soldiers that we are able to use are really just cute little piles of pixels. The backdrops to the levels are quite well drawn, if a little static, and all in all the presentation seems to work fairly well.
Those vibes roll to the sound too, with lots of gunfire present, matching up the different flavours, along with a variety of explosions thrown in. Other than that, there’s not much more to report, apart from little sirens that sound when you are under attack and so on. The presentation is definitely minimalist, and while the action seems to be fast and furious, the rest of the way Warpips shows itself is quite laid back.
Story? Well, there is one, you’ll be relieved to hear! It appears a group of military corporations have decided to band together and invade the peace loving country of Piplonia. Obviously, we can’t let this stand, and so we have to marshall the scarce resources of the country and try to turf these invaders out on their ear. Warpips plays out over a series of islands, and we have to conquer each island, sector by sector, until we achieve final victory.
With the scene set and the narrative nailed on, it’s probably best to look at how the game plays out. Honestly, it’s pretty tricky to describe.
Basically, we choose where we are going to fight first of all, out of the selection of levels on the map. Now, there is something to consider here, a little bit of strategy if you will. You see, when you complete a level, you can get bonus units awarded to you, but each time you finish and defeat a level, the enemy army gets stronger. This means there is a balance to be struck between getting enough units to make your army strong, and not spending too long messing about so the enemy is overwhelming at the end.
Once you have decided where to start your campaign, you then need to choose the units that you take into the field. Each unit has a cost associated with it as it spawns into the battlefield, whilst some units can’t be spawned until a timer has run down, so it is worth getting to know the different units. For instance, your basic infantry is called the Warpip, and they cost $25 to spawn in. Other soldiers get more expensive; tanks and planes are even more. There is also an upper limit to the amount of units that you can have on the battlefield at any one time. Luckily, as you defeat enemy units, you gain EXP, and this can be spent in a variety of ways. You can press X to raise the level of your units, you can press Y to change EXP into cash, letting you buy more units, and finally you can press B to increase the amount of units you can have on the field. There is a choice to make on every level – can you find success with an army of low levelled soldiers, or is it better to raise their level to make them more effective?
Once the units are spawned, they run towards the enemy base, which is your ultimate goal. There is a little bit of control that you can exert over your little guys, but only a small amount. Basically, as your soldiers go about their business, killing baddies and so on, a bar fills, allowing you to command your soldiers to take cover, increase their accuracy, or gee them up, and they will rush down the field and shoot faster. Interestingly, the bar is depleted whichever way you choose to go, so choosing when to use the bar is an interesting tactic to get used to. Other than that the troops go rushing headlong, into minefields, into enemy fire – they don’t care. Balancing the spawning of soldiers with the conditions on the battlefield is a very tricky task.
Warpips works well though and pretty much the only thing I don’t like about the game is the sheer stupidity that is your soldier AI. With Warpips almost wanting to be an RTS, the direct control of your units is out of your hands to a large degree. There is nothing worse than using a gang of Warpips to get to the enemy base, and then watching them meander straight into a minefield and get blown to smithereens. If you could at least give them a waypoint to try and avoid the hazards it would give you a fighting chance, but sadly this is impossible.
On the whole though, with different levels every time you play, and procedural generation in place, your runs in Warpips should never feel the same; and that means the longevity is there.
Warpips is on the Xbox Store
