The point of Gratuitous Space Battles was that it was a fleet manager, not an RTS. So while you watched the space battles play out, you didn’t actually influence them – you were the admiral who had designed the ships and decided upon the tactics. And that made the actual battles gratuitous in terms of the gameplay. That, however, is no longer necessarily true. Cliff from Positech has sent word that he’s continued fiddling with the game, and has released a free patch to allow players to get involved with the battle-action. Cliff says: “It’s only an ‘optional’ feature, and only works in single-player offline games, but from patch 1.60 (which is now live, steam copies will be updated soon), the player can select ships and issue movement and fire orders mid battle, and even edit the ‘standing’ orders for ships in the middle of an engagement.” There’s a video, which explains it in a bit more detail, below. (more…)
Cliffski’s game of tank (and mech!) battles now has a demo, as per his strict policy of producing a demo for every game he puts out. You can pick it up from the game’s own site, or from the GTB page on Steam. The demo contains a sample of the game’s two-way tower defence action, where you can choose to build the defences, or to drop waves of soldiers and armour into the trenches of an alternate World War I. It’s worth playing the demo, because this one’s not for everyone, as Tim’s verdict concluded.
Trailer below! (more…)