If you have the strength to dig yourself out of your Worms addiction and want to play something similar with different scenery, then check out Battle Dwarves. Developed by Applewood House and published by Infinite Ventures, Battle Dwarves is a good looking fun game that’s modeled after classic games such as Scorched Earth. But more people will know what the game is like if I said it played just like Worms, with a medieval twist.
You won’t find funny, wacky and sometimes racy remarks (like in Snails) here, what you WILL find is a selection of medieval dwarf armies with soldier’s names like ThunderHeads, Torks, Boffins, and CraterMakers. But don’t let the names fool you, these Battle Dwarves don’t hit you with heavy swords, they play with bazookas, grenades, railguns, napalm and dynamites. The collection of 20 different weapons is almost identical to the ones in Snails with exceptions of a few. Like, you can dig a tunnel if you get stuck behind or underneath a structure.
In Battle Dwarves, you get to select 4 armies which can be either human or AI. And for each army, you can select 8 different squads with their own names, colors (there are 15 colors to choose from). There are over 20 maps with which you can choose to start the game. The terrain ranges from city lights to the jungle, from outer space to farmland. Unlike Snails, you don’t have to win one battle to get to the next terrain.
The game play is the typical turn based shooting game. Each army takes turns firing at the enemy, and the last army with a soldier alive is the victor. The damage is measured by the health points. Each time a soldier gets hit, his health points will go down by a certain number. When he looses all the health point, the soldier dies and a tombstone taken his place. Each time a soldier kills an enemy, he will usually be rewarded with a promotion. Higher ranks deal more damage to the enemy and receive less damage on each hit. There are bonus items in this game. You can pick up health, money, treasure chests, and promotions that enemies left behind.
There isn’t a radar screen like in Snails, but you can scroll to see your enemies off screen by dragging the screen with your stylus. I like this feature better because you can see the distance better when you have a continuous view. The game displays in landscape mode and can be flipped to fit lefties or righties. You can set your own control buttons; sound effects (SFX) and music volume can be changed or turned off. You can also change the contrast and device speed according to which Pocket PC you are using, which is a very nice touch. The difficulty levels can be set by adjusting the AI levels, which progress nicely and smoothly in the game.
While the title images are very sharp and quite stylish, the terrain graphics are not as sharp as in Snails. The movements are rather smooth at 50 fps, and explosions, weapon shooting among other things are very smooth. But the characters don’t move very well. Music tracks are pleasing; sound effects are sweet and abundant. The game runs nicely from a CF card on my Jornada 568. The game itself takes up less than 3MB of space.
All in all, this is a fun game if you’re a turn-based shooting game fan. While it has much uniqueness in game design and style, I doubt the Snails hardcore will switch gear to Battle Dwarves. But for the rest of the population, you will find this game charming, fun and pretty addictive!
