I had been looking for games as a new Linux user, and while a lot of the smaller games (board games, puzzles, etc.) are very well crafted, they aren't the kind of games I like to play for a long time. I wanted something deeper.
Many of the larger games I'd tried (for Linux) are hard to get into to, sometimes they do not have enough documentation, help, etc. in the beginning and you are inundated with too much to figure out right away.
So I installed a bunch of games, one of which happened to be Globulation 2, and tried them, one after the other. I was disappointed until I got to Globulation.
The thing that hooked me first was the tutorial - you guys really put together an excellent introduction to the game. I do not see tutorials in open source / free games usually, they must be really hard to program I imagine: having a game do all the things it does already, but then making it have some options disabled, adding new options while detecting when a player has followed the directions properly. Well, this one was great and by the time I was making a swimming pool I knew I had found a quality game. The tutorial was on par with commercial games I've played - first impressions are a big deal, so well done.
The game does a fantastic job of balancing simple and complex. It is quick to learn but there are multiple ways to win. I love the image/impression of the glob units: there is an abstract, chess-like quality to the units and structures in that they aren't exactly humanoid. It works perfectly for the whole no-micro-management theme, which is of course, the core of what makes it unique.
My favorite part of the game is resource management. I love how the living resources work, how they regrow, and how you can use the different patterns of restricted area to shape crops and make them come right up to an inn, but still have the field navigable. Or shape a living wall of forest. Sometimes I create a messy map and play against an AI None opponent just to shape the farms. Again, I love the somewhat abstract image of the colorful round wheat berries and that the globs live on wheat and fruit, a sort of vegetarian agrarian utopia. Oh, and the globe style map really adds to that little-world feeling. It took a little getting used to but it is liberating to play a strategy game without artificial black void-borders.
By the way, I'm curious, what's the deal with prune trees?
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
I really like the music as well, it fits with the theme, and the attack music is serious but not too harsh. (Kind of like the CH Ch ch ch when Jason is stalking someone in Friday the 13th). It was a nice touch how the music segues without ending abruptly, even across menus/map editor. I still haven't figured out what condition is happening when the drum beat is added to the normal theme...does it have to do with idle globs? I'll have to look up that one too.
Overall, great game. I want to thank everyone involved. I'm very eager to play the new 10.09.2007 Beta version, I can't wait to see the new color scaling for the farm land - but I am very new to Linux and the prospect of installing a tarball is scary to me. I'm tempted to dive in and try anyway, but I don't want to wreck my current version and then have nothing. I don't know how long Deb packages take to come out, or who makes them, what the process is, etc. I know that Ubuntu takes a while to put new things in its repos. But that question is for my next post!
Thanks again, sorry for the long post!