Chronostation

Review

You’re the commander of a space station deep in space, mining asteroids for crystals containing chroniton particles. While mining one of the asteroids you find an alien spaceship, the parts of which are transported to your space station after being dug out.  Something then happens, an accident of some sort, and when you come around you find that you’re in an unknown place and time. Luckily for you there are still some asteroids containing the chroniton particles which will help you get back home. However, it’s seems you not alone; incoming alien vessels head towards you and your station. They don’t seem to be here to help, so the only way you’re going to get home is to defeat every single alien ship which dwells in this region of space.

You need to protect your space station from one hundred continuous waves of alien spaceship attacks. Your space station is situated in the centre of the screen and the alien ships will attack from all directions. To begin with the alien ships are small and attack in small numbers, but as you progress, they’ll attack in bigger ships and numbers. This won’t be easy, and you will succumb to the alien attacks many times before you can go home.

In the top centre of the screen is your current Resources Stored and Max Storage Limit and Grid Power Load and Max Grid Power Limit. It also displays the current wave you’re on, although as things start to get hectic you may just totally forget about what wave you’re on. The bottom centre of the screen displays each of the nine buildings you can create to protect your station.



These buildings are Power Node, Mining Station, Power Generator, Outpost, Projectile Tower, Particle Tower, Launcher Tower, Squadron Base and Service Post. Each of these will cost some of your resources (how many is displayed as crystals on their icons). Also on the icons is a Power icon, which details how much power that particular building will require to build. Not all buildings require power; the Power Node, Power Generator and Outpost only require crystal resources to build.

Your station starts with One Thousand resources and One Hundred and Ten Power Charge. Using the resources and power you can start adding the buildings so that you can protect your station and collect more resources for more protection. Place the buildings by selecting them from the bottom of the screen and then moving them your chosen position. You can’t just place them anywhere, though; they must be connected to the power grid. So, you’ll need to build out from your station.  How you do that is up to you, but placing power nodes will allow you to connect multiple buildings to them.

Power Nodes will allow you to connect power and buildings together; to begin with you can only connect three buildings to one power node. You can increase the number of connections in Research, as well as with your station. A blue line will indicate connected buildings and a blue bolt icon shows that it has power; however, if there is no power connected to a building then it will be indicated by a red line and a red bolt icon. The Power Generator allow you to increase your total power output thus letting you add more and more buildings.

The Outpost is the only building which doesn’t require being connected to the power grid. You can place the outpost near some asteroids which are currently out of reach. The outpost will also allow you to power its own power grid as well as being able to equip it with two defence towers. The Service Post is a support building which sends out repair drones to damaged buildings in its range. Your buildings do self-health over time but are a little slow; the drones are much faster at repairing your damage.

The Squadron Base allows you to build Fighters and Bombers; the fighters will attack any ship in range while the bombers will ignore the smaller ships and concentrate on the larger ships. It is a strong defensive building, but its upkeep is expensive. The Mining Station will mine for resources for you if it’s connected to the power grid and asteroid bearing those lovely crystals. The asteroids containing the chroniton particles that you need may not be within easy reach from your station but an outpost will overcome that problem.

There are three weapon towers at your disposal: the Projectile, Particle and Launcher towers. The Projectile tower is your standard defensive tower; inexpensive and comes with two firing modes: Point Defensive Machine Gun mode and the stronger Cannon mode. The machine gun can take down incoming rockets and torpedoes and smaller ships, although it only has a short range. The cannon targets only frigates and larger ships but is much stronger than the machine gun.

The Particle tower comes with three firing modes: Point Defence Laser Beam mode, which can shoot down rockets and torpedoes. Pulse mode will target any alien ships within its range. Plasma mode is a strong defensive weapon although it will only target cruisers and larger ships. The Launcher tower comes with two weapon modes: homing missile (which target any ships) and torpedoes (which only target cruisers and larger ships but do more damage than the missiles).

You can upgrade your buildings in Research, which can be found on the main menu screen. Each of the buildings has the option of several upgrades, such as Hit Points, Self-Repair Speed Per Second, Operating Energy Usage and Weapon Damage etcetera. These upgrades will cost Research Credits and you earn these credits from unspent resources from your previous game. As your space station is about to be destroyed, the alien parts you collected begin to form an electric bubble around the station.

When your station is finally destroyed, its game over.  However, the alien spaceship parts that you found in an asteroid transport you back in time to just before you were first attacked (start a new game from main menu screen). This will happen time upon time, repeatedly stuck in a time loop. Each time you fail, starting a new game and using any resources from your previous game in Research will allow you to slowly become stronger. This will allow you to hopefully move closer to defeating the one hundred waves of alien attacks awaiting you.

In the options you’ll find settings for Resolution, Full Screen, High Details, Visible Power Lines, Visible Full Health Bars, Gradient Bars, Music and Sound Effects. On the main menu screen is where you can change the games Language (English, Arabic, Czech, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Russian and Chinese).

Chronostation is enjoyable to play, although it can be frustrating when you reach a point where your current weapons and buildings don’t stand a chance of surviving. With each new game, having researched your buildings and weapons will hopefully help you as you strive towards reaching and defeating the one hundred waves of alien attacks. As you make your way through wave upon wave of attacks, it becomes hectic trying to keep an eye on everything at once.

When you’ve had your botty spanked and its game over you end up back at the main menu screen.  This isn’t a problem as that’s how the game is, but I would like to have some information about which wave I had reached. There is nothing to let you know; checking the current wave on the top middle of the screen is fine but when you get busy trying to fend off the enemy you don’t always know how well you’ve done. Overall though I’ve enjoyed playing Chronostation and it’s certainly worth giving it a bash.

 

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!


Positives

+ Enjoyable and challenging game
+ Nice graphics, music and sounds
+ Has achievements

Negatives

- Frustrating at times
- No cards currently

Review Summary

Will you break free of this time anomaly and make it home??? Or will you succumb to the relentless waves of alien attacks???

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Zeepond Rating: 7/10

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