Creeper World

Most real time strategy games (RTS) have the player fighting wave after wave of enemy combatants, but Creeper World turns that idea on its head—you fight one enemy, and it’s winning. RTS games usually follow a simple formula, like Age of Empires or Halo Wars you build your armies up only to eventually bulldoze your enemies and claim the map. But what if the enemy outclasses you in nearly every respect? What if you have to build defenses only to ensure survival? Taking that idea and running with it, Creeper World pits you in a race against time to see if you can build up your defenses only as a means to escape an overwhelming enemy.

Tactical Retreat

Creeper World has the player constantly at odds with an amorphous bluish-purple enemy set on swallowing up the map. In an attempt to defend humanity’s last bastion, Odin City, the player must strategically connect relays to fire up the teleporter and move the city safely to a new planet.

Each of the multitude of campaign levels sees the player not in a battle for supremacy, but a war of attrition—trying to hold out long enough for their armies to ‘live to fight another day.’ The constant tension that besets the player knowing that the Creeper cannot be defeated, only delayed heightens the problem-solving mechanisms in a way most RTS games primary mechanics simply don’t allow for.

Simple by Design

Creeper World doesn’t offer much to look at aesthetically, but still manages to grab you in the same way a tabletop game of Risk does. Because, when it comes down to it, if the mechanics work well enough, and the stakes are clear—the game doesn’t need much else. With all the focus on retreating rather than attacking, the player is forced to reexamine how they might normally play an RTS and turn their strategies upside down. And, with the added tension of it only being a matter of time before the enemy consumes the map entirely, all those novel decisions have to be made faster than they normally might.

Always Running

However, when it comes down to it the problem with Creeper World comes from the same novelty of approach that makes it wonderful. The player is always on the run, always outmatched and yearning to escape the onslaught through a Stargate type portal. They can build towers, guns, a plethora of defenses normally commonplace in an RTS, but all those measures are just to buy time.

Eventually, they will be consumed along with the map. In essence, the game feels like the original Alien movie, where Ripley isn’t able to give the monster its comeuppance by shooting it into space, but rather just abandoning ship entirely.

Pros

• Brave new enemy to face
• Quick and short mission structure
• Tons of missions and story modes

Cons

• Retreating can get old
• Aged, simple, graphics
• Not enough variety in defense options