Swords and Soldiers Hands-On

While you may not have heard of developer Ronimo Games, chances are you do know about de Blob, the game the company's founders created at university. While studying in Utrecht in the Netherlands, the original team created de Blob for an independent games festival. It caught the eye of THQ, who took it on and developed it into a full-blown Wii title. Now those same students are back, complete with their own company and a new game, the side-scrolling 2D real-time strategy game Swords and Soldiers.

Swords and Soldiers tells the story of three rival civilisations, who each have their own eccentric motives for battling it out. The Chinese fight for more toys to amuse their child emperor, the Aztecs fight to show off their magical prowess, and the Vikings, well, they just seem to love barbeques a lot and will stop anyone who gets in the way of their grog-fuelled cookouts. The story is not what you'd call historically accurate--less Age of Empires and more Gummi Bears--but nonetheless it adds a sense of charm and humour that runs throughout the game.

The game follows typical RTS gameplay mechanics, albeit simple versions of them. Resources need to be gathered, which can be used to build units to attack the enemy. Each faction has a gatherer and four different combat units, though not all units are accessible from the start of the game. We initially took on the role of the Vikings, the most aggressive of the factions, and set about playing through the campaign mode.

The first level acts as an introduction to the game and guides you through building units and navigating the action, which takes place on a 2D plane. We were given an initial stack of gold with which to build our first resource gatherers: busty maid miners who apparently didn't go down all that well with Nintendo during the approval process, due to their overanimated assets. Once they'd gathered enough gold, we set about building our first combat units to attack the enemy base on the opposite side of the map. Each unit you build is represented by a gold circle at the top of the screen, and you simply point the cursor at it to activate it.

As our first little axe-wielding BBQ lover emerged from the base, we were surprised to find that you have no direct control over units--they charge off to battle no matter what. Instead, the game gives you spells with which to aid your units, represented by blue circles at the top of the screen. New spells, units, and upgrades can be bought with gold by accessing the upgrade menu, and we chose to start off with the lightning spell.

Using the map to find our units, we started casting our lightning spell on the enemy in order to clear the path to the enemy base. This spell has a particularly satisfying jolt to it, and the character animations of the fried enemies were hilarious. Call us sick, but we fried a group of monkeys repeatedly just to watch the animation. Each spell uses mana, which is generated slowly over the course of a level, and as we progressed we were able to buy a healing spell and guide our faction to victory over rival Viking Blackbeard by destroying his base.

As the campaign progressed, new spells and units became unlocked, including axe throwers, who were good long-distance fighters; Viking frost hammers, whose oversized weapons could stun enemies for a short period of time; and rage spells, which let any unit charge to the battlefield and get a head start on other troops. Each of the spells and units can be combined in different ways, lending a surprising amount of depth to the game despite the lack of direct control over units. Later on in the campaign we encountered the Aztec faction, which used very strong giant creatures called sun gods to attack us. In order to destroy them, we had to use a combination of tactics. By casting the rage spell on the frost hammers we were able to run them in ahead of the axe throwers, stun the creatures, and then finish them off with a barrage of flying axes.

As well as the main campaign, the game features a skirmish mode where you pit yourself against the AI or a friend in split-screen, though there is no online multiplayer. There's also a challenge mode that takes individual elements from the single-player game and turns them into a minigame. Our favourites were a survival mode where you guide a lone Viking through an endless stream of enemies to see how long he can survive, and a boulder challenge, where you have to try to bounce a boulder and crush the Vikings while protecting the Aztecs. The game also features a custom achievements system--we managed to unlock one achievement as we played--which adds a little bit of incentive to play through the game.

Graphically, the game shuns a realistic 3D approach and instead uses a crisp-looking 2D engine, which makes great use of the Wii's 480p widescreen mode. The art style lends itself well to the gameplay, and everything from the Batman-style loading screens to the colourful characters boasts attention to detail. The dialogue is also worthy of mention--it's very funny despite being text-based. Swords and Soldiers pillages the Wii in Europe this Friday and will be available for 1,000 Nintendo points.