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Saturday 9 February, 2008
Gameplay
The second hour of play was more what I was accustomed to. I was in a full game this time (3 on 3 on 3 on 3) and random picked a unit killer, capable of casting massive Area of Effect spells on the lesser units to earn lots of gold. I used this gold to upgrade my units to the infamous Dark Taurens, capable of almost single handedly taking on a hero, and produced very quickly. My team also chipped in to help, getting me Dark Taurens faster. This game was much more fun for me, and I was able to toy with my opponents slightly, sending in 3 or 4 Dark Taurens to take down their units, without destroying their base.
There are lots of instances of positive feedback in Footies, with the main one being gold. By killing a unit or hero, you are awarded gold, and can use it to upgrade and buy things. While the game is somewhat random in the aspect that what hero you get is extremely important, those that are good at micro-managing their units so that they all attack the same target, as well as their hero, generally are able to do better.
Design
Footmen Frenzy has a few innovative aspects that make it fun to play. The first is the "cube" in the center of the arena. It restores mana, and is incredibly helpful to have with most heros. By controlling the center, that team is able to not only access the shops without resistance, but also has mana restored much faster and is able to cast more spells. Therefore, controlling the center is an important dynamic. There is also the dynamic of "teching" in which a player does not buy a hero at all, and instead uses that gold (heros are very expensive) to upgrade their units instead. To try and prevent that, there is a delay of about 5 minutes where you cannot upgrade your units; however, it is still a viable option, especially if the other players pool or contribute so you can further upgrade your units. There are also other NPC's that you can buy, such as a rock golem, and an "altar of the gods" which destroys all units it can see, but only has one hit point. One of the most important aspects is learning what to spend gold on.
As there is only one level, the level design is not varied, but I do believe the one level is well constructed, with shops and the center cube an equal distance from each team. The game is fairly random but provides challenge by forcing the player to control his units, gold, hero, base, and defensive towers, and use them all as effectively as possible. The game has nothing to create "conflict" outside of the idea that you're supposed to kill the other team, but I was still motivated to do so. The game thrives on social interaction, and the chat system allows players to trash talk with the other team and chat with their team only in order to formulate strategy. The only thing I would change about the game is that it is exploitable (by pooling one player you can buy an extremely powerful NPC early in the game and win almost instantly) but it is hard to balance a game and for the most part it is balanced. Overall I really liked the game and its reward structure, and felt it extremely well developed for a third party modification of a game. It's a great game to play with friends that isn't hard to learn like Defense of the Ancients, and isn't nearly as high strung.
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