I have been reviewing Herocraft games for about a year now. With four (or five depending upon how you count) reviews under my belt, I think it is no secret that I have been extremely impressed by many of their offerings. Herocraft’s games tend to be extremely original concepts which defy conventional categorization (such as Stolen in Sixty Seconds) or they put a new spin on an old favorite (such as Ball Rush Aqua). Each game seems to be more original and more ambitious than the last. So, of course I was expecting big things from Revival, the first true 4X game for the Windows Mobile Platform. Will Revival live up the high standards set by previous Herocraft games, or will it be..in need of a revival? Jump past the break to find out more.

Installation and Registration: Installation is relatively standard. Simply download the game and install via ActiveSync (or Windows Mobile Device Center). You will be immediately granted access to the tutorial which will help you learn the game. Enter a registration code in order to gain access the all of the gameplay mode.

The Story: I don’t always spend a lot of time recounting the story when I review games. Often (but not always), I figure the story will be well enough explained when you play the game, so it would just be redundant for me to go through it again.

In Revival, the story is just so original and creative, it almost made me laugh out loud, so I figured I would just pause for a minute to share a bit with you. Of course, when you play the game, it will all be explained again.

Well, then here we go. In the not too distant future, mankind discovers a method to travel between planets, leading to interplanetary settlements. Unfortunately, because of the time it takes to travel between planets, and the pace of expansion, many planets become isolated, and begin to devolve technologically. Ultimately, and with little explanation, these civilizations find themselves trapped for thousands of years without any significant technological advances.

Finally, after almost 3000 years, with only seven technological civilizations remaining, mankind invents a space teleportation device, allowing nearly instantaneous travel between distant worlds. With the invention of space teleportation, the race was on to reclaim the lost worlds, and the interstellar war began.

Ultimately, war led to a tentative peace, in which rules were established for the settlement of the remaining planets. In effect, each race could send a "Mentor" to the planet to introduce new technologies and lead them in local battles. As the Mentor on one of these planets, your primary task will be to help the local citizens occupy as much land as possible, while advancing its technology, in order to control…and REVIVE…the planet.

So, that is a quick overview of the story. Of course, you will get more details and instructions once you start playing the game.

Gameplay: Revival belongs to a subgenre of strategy games known as 4x Games. This genre, which was originally invented by Sid Meier’s Civilization in the early 1990’s consists of eXploration, eXpansion, eXploitation, and eXtermination. Of course, the last team standing takes over the planet and wins the game. Let’s take a look at how Revival did with each of these "X" categories.

eXploraration

Like most games in this genre, the world is a mystery, waiting to be uncovered. At the beginning of the game, you will control a single "Mentor" and the city which he has already founded. Only the area in the vicinity of this city will be visible to you. Your mentor, however, appears to be tireless in his ability to walk miles at a time, discovering new lands and resources. As you move into new territories, additional regions of the map will be uncovered for you.

One thing I did notice here, however, is the odd passage of time in this game. Time is calculated by years, however, I found that taking only a few steps would result in the passage of a year. There is absolutely no context, in other words, for the passage of time. When I raised this concern with Herocraft, they noted that the action takes place on an alien world, in which the passage of time could be very different than on Earth. Which is true. However, the calculation of years in this game still seemed somewhat arbitrary. Although this is a minor point, this is an area which could significantly improve gameplay.

eXpansion

Expanding your empire means that you control in increasing amount on land in (as the Brain would say) your quest to, "take over the world". In expanding your empire, you have to make critical choices regarding the use of your resources. You can build and develop land, create units (people) and research science. Each choice you make will unlock additional choices within the game. Building a building, for example, may allow you to research new sciences and create different units of people, and so on.

eXploitation

Exploitation involves utilizing your resources. Within the lands which you conquer, you will find mineral mines, food, wood, and gold. These resources are all necessary in order to advance in the game, and you will want to use your workers to gather or mine them. Of course, different advances in science and buildings can help you gather or process these resources faster and more efficiently.

I found this aspect of the game to be a little ambiguous. While you could see that a mine had been created, it was difficult to tell what these resources were doing. The exploitation phase could have been better developed in order to make the importance of each of these resources more clear within the game.

eXtermination

I suppose that extermination is many people’s favorite of the four "X"s. This is where you battle against the other civilizations. To attack, simply tap on an enemy building or unit. Of course, your fighting units will continually advance as you learn new technologies and build appropriate buildings. You will start with barbarian clubmen, and quickly advance to archers, swordmen, and ultimately more advances units (in the image above you can see an archer and a barbarian protecting the mine).

To me, battling may have been the weakest part of the game. As an initial note, combat is entirely animated, with no interaction by the player aside from the decision to attack. When you attack, both your unit and the enemy will be displayed with a colored line above them, showing their remaining strength. More often than not, the units did not begin with full power, however, I could find little explanation or reason for this. The amount of power with which you will begin appeared to be completely arbitrary.

Likewise, throughout the battle, there appeared to be no basis upon which to explain the amount of power lost by each combatant. The animation simply showed swinging without contact. At the end of each animation, a portion of the power bar would be lost. I could not understand how this was calculated or determined. This was probably the most frustrating part of the game for me. It came across as almost completely arbitrary and automated. I felt like I could have flipped a coin and achieved the same result.

Turns

This is a turn based game, and each of your buildings and units can only take a limited number of actions during a game. Once you have moved all of your units and begun construction of buildings and units in each city, your turn will end (of course, you can end your turn at any time before that). Once you have ended your turn, your opponents will each have an opportunity to take their turns, in which they may attack your cities and units.

Winning the Game: To win, you must either defeat all of the enemy races (extermination), capture all of the cities on the planet (expansion and extermination), or develop the technology to build a teleporter and rejoin the rest of your clan (expansion).

Maps: There are seven different maps in this game, each with its own unique terrain. This adds a bit of variety to the game and increases the difficulty of the game by shifting the playing environment. I was disappointed, however, that there was no option to generate a random map. Random maps would have presented the game with endless gameplay as you would never play the same scenario twice.

Tutorial: Revival offers a nice, albeit somewhat confusing tutorial mode. Rather than simply present instructions on the screen such as Tap the screen here to take this action, the tutorial took the form of an internal dialogue between your character and his psyche. In essence, your character has developed a bad case of amnesia, but his psyche has not. In essence, the tutorial walks you through the game by providing a series of dialogues between your character and his psyche, most of which involve the psyche instructing your character as to which actions are available. While I loved the idea of witty internal dialogues to help you learn the controls and options (I don’t know what Freud would think, but there is definitely some self loathing going on here); these dialogues just did not have a polished feel to me. It was also painfully apparent that this was a port from a cell phone game, as all of the instructions they relied upon referencing the controls in relation to a T9 phone keypad (eg: press *5 to take this action) while the touchscreen controls felt like an afterthought.

Modes and Difficulties: In addition to the Tutorial, there are two modes of play in Revival: Single Player and Campaign Mode. In single player, you control a lone explorer. Your role is to establish a colony and develop a civilization while avoiding being wiped out by up to seven enemy races. Think this sounds too easy, well, get the heck out of easy mode and see what you think of "Not that easy" and "Not easy".

Once you have become familiar with the game, you might want to give campaign mode a try. In campaign mode, you will be dropped into the middle a developed or developing civilization. At the beginning you will be briefed on a mission which you must accomplish in order to move forward. Typically, in campaigns, you will start at a distinct disadvantage and must use your wit to avoid getting slain by your enemies.

The campaigns are a fantastic way to add a variety of new elements into the game. Each one tests your skills in a different manner. I was disappointed, however, to find that you cannot select which campaign to play. You start with the first one and move on to the next as you complete each one. It would be nice if you were given a choice of several starting points, through which you could access a variety of different campaigns.

I was also somewhat disappoint to find that there was no way to connect with your friends and play against each other in online, multiplayer action. Obviously, this would add a significant new dimension to the game. Hopefully this will be added in a future release.

Graphics: The graphics in Revival were really well drawn, as I would expect from my previous dealings with Herocraft. Each individual type of unit (person) is distinctively drawn and animated. Likewise, each type of building is unique and easily distinguished. A game like this needs to have good graphics in order to be playable, but does not need great graphics. I thought Revival’s graphics were pretty good, but there is certainly room for improvement, particularly in the animated battles and other sequences. In particular, the animation sequence at the beginning of the game (above) was extremely well done.

Languages: I was impressed by the fact that there were several different localizations in the game. There is quite a lot of information being presented to you, especially in the tutorial mode, which means a lot of information to be translated. Nonetheless, in addition to English, the game can also be played in:

• Russian
• German
• Spanish
• Italian

All four languages come preloaded on the game.

Saving: This game would be almost impossible to play without a save feature. And, of course, Herocraft recognized that. I was a little disappointed to find only three save slots (plus an autosave slot). In this type of game, you frequently want to save without overwriting a previous stop, in case you have made an egregious mistake. That ability to go back in time can sometimes be critical. Herocraft should consider at least doubling (if not more) the number of save slots.

Conclusion: I was extremely impressed to find a complicated 4X game like this available for Windows Mobile. I have been a fan of the Civilization series since its inception, and I was thrilled to play Revival. I found a lot to like in this game, and loved the fact that it really stayed true to the 4X style of gameplay. That being said, there is a lot of room for improvement in this game, particularly with respect to the utilization of resources, and engaging in battles. Despite these deficiencies, I felt this was a well made game, and I am already looking forward to the next release.

Vital Stats

Name: Revival

Developer: HeroCraft

Where To Buy: HeroCraft

JAMM Store (coming soon)

Price: $24.95 (Pocket PC version).

Note: Parts of this review were based upon a prerelease version of the game.  Some images were provided by Herocraft.

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