Creature Conflict: The Clan Wars Impressions

Creature Conflict: The Clan Wars is a game aimed directly at fans of Worms, a popular turn-based combat game. But instead of featuring worms, Creature Conflict features up to 16 anthropomorphic animals as they battle one another on a series of really small worlds.

The game includes four clans, with each clan possessing four different animals, which makes for 16 animals in total. There's a wide range, including a gorilla, a coyote, a shrew, and a guinea pig. The animals are rendered in cell-shaded animation, which helps emphasize the cartoonlike nature of the combat.

Combat itself takes place in turns. Each animal has only a limited number of seconds to move around the world and launch attacks on rivals with outlandish and over-the-top weapons, such as sewage bombs that envelop the target in a toxic cloud to cause an orbiting spaceship to crash right on top of a target's head. Also worthy of note is the atomic toaster, which is a suitcase-sized atomic bomb that you can place at a specific location, but you'll need to make sure you have enough time to run away from it like mad.

There are also special power-ups scattered randomly each turn, and you can pick up health packs or something really powerful, such as a wish, which has a random effect. We saw one wish cast on a target, and it caused a giant explosion that wiped out the target and two friendlies next to it. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

The game will have a single-player campaign where you can try to battle through all the worlds, but it will also feature multiplayer support for up to four players. The game is fairly comical, in the tradition of the Worms series, and it should appeal to those looking for a fun new combat-based game. Creature Conflict looks to ship early next year.