Colony Siege

Review

Colony Siege is an RTS game with a detailed tower defense gameplay built in. Set in a far off future, Colony Siege portrays the timeline perfectly and sets the game’s mode accordingly with its unique level design, environments, gameplay, voice acting, and sound effects.

Plot: It's the twenty-second century, full of promises. Humankind has progressed a lot in the fields of AI, Nanotechnology, unlimited energy, FTL: Faster than Light drive, and more. This progress brought much-needed peace and harmony between all of mankind, and ushered in a new era.

But not for long. The Xenos have invaded Earth, attacking everything in sight. During the attack, Xenos disabled the safety system of Earth's power generator which is powered by a mini-black hole, destroying Earth and nearby human colonies in the process.

Now the Xenos pose a threat to the remaining human colonies throughout the universe. A small pocket of human resistance fighters aims to put up a fight and defend the remaining human colonies in order to rebuild.

Gameplay: Colony Siege brings in a great RTS experience mixed with an intense tower defense gameplay. The game goes through in wave progression and each level contains specific goals to be achieved.

At the very beginning players will be starting with a command craft (by far the most powerful utility in-game), barriers, shotgun defense towers, and one type of trap.

With each game and each level of progress, you will be unlocking more and more buildings, traps, defensive towers, and command craft upgrades. Each tower and command craft upgrade can be levelled up three times, and with each upgrade, you will see a massive state boost and visual change.

Command Craft: The most important utility in your inventory, the command craft has the ability to attack your enemies from the longest range in-game, building defenses and re-generating defense health. The command craft can be fitted with offensive, defensive and utility items that can be obtained from the store and upgraded.

The command Craft can be operated with C to select and mouse, right to control.

Buildings:  From the get-go, you will be handling the buildings and defending them. Some buildings provide housing, some deliver offensive capabilities, and some defensive. At the beginning of each level, you will be given a Citadel (the administration building) which needs to be defended at all costs, and losing the Citadel will prompt a defeat. Other buildings will have to be built, costing the player an amount of cash and material. Unlike the Citadel, losing won’t cause any long-term harm and can be rebuilt easily.

Unlike other RTS games, Colony Siege features building that regenerates health. The regeneration rate is poor, but it allows the players to focus on important buildings and defenses while leaving the less important ones to re-generate on their own, which is a welcome touch. And for a faster re-gen process, your command craft needs to be near the damaged building/defenses.

Defenses:  Each defensive tower/building/trap is built to perform one specific purpose, except for the Aircraft factory. Each has its own stats, costs, upgrades, and uses assigned to it perfectly. Each defensive structure has its limitations and parameters; for example, buildings defenses also re-generate health and can be rebuilt after being destroyed.

It's incredible the number of defensive items the developers have integrated with the gameplay, and every single one of them works smoothly without any hiccups.

Performance: Getting into the game I was worried about my 4^th gen i5. RTS’s games being traditionally CPU intensive, I wondered how the game would perform maxed out on my i5. To my surprise, the game ran smoothly for the most part, 75-80 fps on average, and only dipped below 60 fps during the final few waves with minor hiccups.

Music and Sound Effects: I am both impressed and satisfied with the music and sound effect choices made by the creators. Both were appropriate for the theme of the game and played out well with the intense RTS combat. The only downside was the constant alarm sounds, which were only prompted after enemy units entered through the defenses.  

Visuals: Each level plays out on distant space colonies and each has its own unique environment and visuals. For the most part, visuals were impressive and unique, appropriate for the theme. But some environments lacked the flare of others. Some levels featured added effects and animations without any performance penalty.

Guide: This is a great touch that every game should have, in my opinion. A great visual representation showing all of the unique in-game features and how they work.

Considering all aspects, Colony Siege turned out to be a great RTS, tower defense game. I’ll be looking forward to future content updates.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!