I have owned this game since long ago and I am so happy that it finally made it onto steam! I can't wait for more games of the past to be reborn on the PC master race!

Pretty good game but it is kind of confusing for newer people and the tutorial didnt really help but overall nice game gg

One of the coolerst RTS I've played. No idea how many hours I spent when it was new.

Don't let my Gameplay hours fool you. I have at least 3000 hours played on the original version.

Yes. Most definitely yes. This is the game that introduced me to the RTS genre. Heck, it introduced me to the world of video games. I had no idea what was waiting for me. Countless hours creating army after army, attempting to beat the hardest AI.Playing the Campaign.Playing Multiplayer, with what was left of the community.It all has been time i couldn't have spent better elsewhere. And I'm glad i didn't. Seeing IC come back from the dead like this... TO STEAM NO LESS. I just can't wrap my head around this.
Now, for the actual review: This is my first game review so please don't judge. I will try my best :D.


Things and points I like most about the game:

1. It is fun. Every feature of the game is. From playing the campaign, all the way to making your own custom army that you then take onto the battlefield!!! Insert 300 reference here.

2. It is creative. I think the whole over 50.000 possible combinations and the presence of a level editor say everything.

3.It is challenging. Boy this one is so true. Especially if you are playing multiplayer. THERE IS NO MERCY ON THE FIGHTING GROUND. IN THIS GAME YOU EITHER WRECK FACE OR GET YOUR FACE REKT. Well...
you know...
it depends on who you're up against.Either way, before you hop into online play, it's best that you know how to play the game the slightest bit. Preferably play the tutorial.
Sorry if I misspelled anything. ^_^

NOW, FOR THE RATINGS. (Man this is long. You still with me? Hold on just a little longer.)

Graphics = 9
Before you go and tell everybody that the graphics suck, just take in consideration the year this game was made. This was revolutionary back then! Sometimes small glitches happen but very solid nonetheless.

Music = 8
The soundtracks differ in every map type (Savannah, Jungle, Desert, Artic...).They are good. Nothing else to say here. Move on.

Creativity / Originality = 10
You can slap wings on a snake.

Story = 7
I personally didn't like the story that much : P . Multiplayer, army making and skirmishes agaisnt the AI make up for it.

Gameplay = 10
The Multiplayer matches can be either fast-paced or slow-paced. There is no way to tell what kind of creature combinations your enemy has got in their armies, so it really depends on the game style of the players. A lot of maps that further increase the diversity of the games. They are either ground based maps, or water based maps. (Could be a mix of both too).

Overall = 9

All this being said, this game is a must-have for every person out there that likes a very good Real-Time Strategy game.

First of all, I'm biased-- I'm one of those strange and twisted folk who kept playing this game after its original release fell into obscurity, and for years now the Impossible Creatures community has been fluctuating with an average of a dozen or so people at any given time, worldwide. But then, one day, Nordic Games approached us few survivors and told us of their plan to re-release the game on Steam; we jumped onboard as beta testers, and the day has finally come for release!

So yes-- basically, I'm not the most impartial of sources. But it's important for me to point out that Nordic has in no way asked or cajoled me to provide this review, nor have they had any input into its content. I'm just a fan of the game. In fact, I know the game inside and out, and that's why you should listen when I say: holy ♥♥♥♥, Impossible Creatures is amazing.

Look, let's get the honest criticism out of the way early on-- this game came out in the very early 2000's. It does not look like Skyrim. The models are fairly low-detail (watch the trailer and look at the screenshots) and a lot of the gameplay elements-- build gatherers, gather resources, build buildings, tech up-- won't blow anyone's mind in a modern context. But that's not why this game is important; it's important because of its quirky, brilliant central idea-- its gimmick, if you will. Because as you no doubt have already noticed, Impossible Creatures gives you the ability to send into battle units of your own creation-- magnificent (or hilarious, or both) mixtures of stock animals combined to most efficiently wreak havoc on your opponent. And that's obviously where the game shines.

Don't get me wrong-- other parts of IC are phenomenal. For instance, the lush, beautifully painted maps, or the tactile, atmospheric soundtrack; all symptoms of a sumptuous, absorbing and vibrant style that has sadly gone out of fashion. This isn't the kind of game that strives to be edgy and dark; rather, it presents an experience you can actually enjoy, visually, audibly and emotionally. But the main reason you should buy Impossible Creatures is its depth of gameplay. The depth to this game is remarkable. That's why my people and I have been playing it for [commence italics] thirteen years [end italics]. Do you want to sneak into an enemy base and disrupt his resource gathering? Heck yes, son, chameleons crossed with cheetahs. Is there a mob of power-melee units trampling towards your coal mine? Mix some dragonflies with sharks and rain toothy hell on them from above. Perhaps you're the kind of strategist who prefers to turtle? Well, you're in luck! You can do that! Literally! With turtles! Or, hey, screw it-- if you prefer a more direct approach, why not just crush your opponents with a horde of elephants waving lobster claws? So with this in mind, there's obviously a huge scope for a variety of exotic and wonderful strategies-- and all of them can be successful, if you make good enough creatures and play with enough skill. If you have a playstyle, you can make it work. But this is all macro stuff.

It's the finer details that really make the game stand out. Even within overarching strategies there is an almost infinite scope for variation. For example, a fairly standard addition to any army is a level 3 melee unit-- a standard, versatile, mid-level grunt. But it's not like there's only one level 3 melee unit. Maybe you want something fast and poisonous, to inflict stings or bites and then retreat to a safe distance while the venom deals damage over time? Maybe you want something tough and powerful that forms herds and regenerates its health? Maybe your opponent crushed you last game with low-damage, high-health units en masse-- well, you can take a jaunt to the army builder and cook up something to deal with that; combine a wasp with a lioness and assassinate those meatshields into oblivion!

This variation on a fine, precise level is what turns Impossible Creatures into an art form. It's baffling just what people come up with-- and phenomenal to see it work for them. A friend of mine named Matt, for instance, once fielded a musk ox with the head of a condor. It didn't have wings, just a condor head sticking out the front of this beefy ox body. It was called "accept me as your king", and we all thought it was hilarious, because it was.

Then it won a battle. Then it won another battle. Then Matt won the game.

The combination of musk ox defense and cheap, large, low-melee condor parts just happened to result in a strangely optimal creature-- it was cheap enough that Matt could spam it, but tough enough to hold its own. This is why you should play IC; just when you think you've seen it all, a new strategy comes along that completely switches the metagame.

But, naturally, even a game as diverse and clever as Impossible Creatures has gameplay issues. Mostly these relate to balance. Sadly, when Relic stopped supporting IC, it wasn't perfect (nor can it ever really be). As it stands, the base IC package includes the Insect Invasion mod-- Relic's last attempt at balancing the game (which adds a lot of very fun and interesting mechanics). II was released an incredibly long time ago-- long enough that players have been able to essentially solve the game, and find the truly optimal combination of creatures to use in any given situation. Suddenly, all the depth and variety in the game began to disappear. Which is why myself, Matt, Steve, Phil and Byam-- the original core modding team-- decided to make an add-on mod for IC called Tellurian.

Since we started, we've added 20 stock creatures to the game. It's the only mod still being maintained, balanced, and patched (as a matter of fact, 2.03 is almost ready for release). It's free (not for profit!), it's fun, and it comes with a bunch of maps-- so if you ever get tired of moose lobsters and baboon sperm whales at level 5 (spoilers), visit this page:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/tellurian/

... And try out giant squids crossed with panthers. Or blue whales crossed with scorpions. Or pistol shrimp horses-- just get the mod, you'll love it, and every download is a little more incentive to keep the project alive.

Impossible Creatures lives anew-- buy it, download it! And let's be honest, for its incredibly reasonable price, even if you hate the gameplay you can still get your money's worth making daffy combinations in the army builder (yes, I know, komodo dragon crossed with a skunk becomes a "komodo drunk", everybody finds that one eventually).

You know when you get those moments when you say to yourself "Ahh if only it was on steam, I loved that game so much"


Well thats been in my head for about 10 years. To say I am happy is an understatement!

People usually dislike certain animals, but with impossible creatures, you can make them worse. Your enemy hates insects? Make a whole army of them. Hates bees? Why not enlarge them? Piranhas? Snakes? Why not fused together?

This game is pretty much 'create your own unit' type of RTS. It has its own campaign, you can play online and with friends (or against). It may be old but that doesn't mean it can't be fun.

ITS BACK! ITS FINALLY BACK AND ITS GLORIOUS!

Would definitely recommend. From the moment this game appeared on steam's front page, my life took a turn for the better. Once again, swarms of hippos can be seen buzzing in the air; swarms of chaming mantises swarming all over the place; and many, many more swarms of things that just shouldn't be.

Thank you to the necromancer who brought this game back from the dead, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Oh dear god, yes I recommend this game. I actually interrupted Fallout 4 day 2 to install and make sure this was working when I saw it. I loved this game with an unholy passion and from my short testing it seems to be working fine on modern systems now. I did have to right-click the Steam launcher and run as administrator to deal with a 'Steam has failed to initialize' error when trying to launch the game, but once I rebooted steam as admin it's running absolutely smoothly.

As far as the game goes, it's a solid 8/10 RTS easily pushed to 10/10 by being one of the all time greats of Mad Science related gaming. Runs very smoothly now, and graphics actually seem pretty decent considering when it was first released. I'm pretty impressed and looking forward to playing it all over again. Plus the expansion which I never played.

I'll be going back to Fallout now, but simply owning this game again warms my mad science loving little heart more than I can possibly explain.