Wormy played Battleswarm: Field of Honor

Just tried out BattleSwarm. It is definitely rough around the edges...its in beta, so that excuses some, but I suspect it will remain a bit rough. But its a pretty cool game.

I lean RTS, so the bugs are my preferred side, and the bugs seem to be a little under-represented, so that is cool. I would expect they can maintain a 3-1 ratio though, and that seems to be what you need to play a map.

The game appears to be a Free to play, with in-game-currency used to buy upgrades that are timed. In the beta you start with 1000 'meta tix' which I used to buy a bunch of RTS units (eggs) that you can bring into matches for a set number of days. I also bought a treasure box.. but the first item i got from my box appears to have been limited by rank.. and i can't use it.. and its timed. So thats kinda dumb.

Gameplay from the RTS side is pretty spammy. You can only select like.. 20 units in a squad. Given the number of bugs on screen, this needs to be upped by about a factor of 5. The lowest level bugs are utterly uselss, other than to draw fire. Which they do admirably.

My first game, I was too confused to really know what was going on, and got my ass kicked. But the second game (with my better arrangement of bugs) I did much better. It seems you typically go in with 2 bug players and 6 human players, so I had help on my side. Together, we were attacking a 4 sided base from nearly all directions nearly all the time.. so the pressure was up. By mixing forces, I definitely was able to get in there and mess it up, particularly with the 'waller' units. They are huge and tough. I also was able to get my bug-player into the fight a little, and call down some comets as an AOE attack on certain groupings of enemy troopers.

All in all, it was fun. I'd play it again, but unless they refine the RTS controls a bit, it will likely not ever be too strategic of a game from the bug side. If I was the designers, I'd up the strength and health of the bugs, and reduce their number. What good is having 100 useless bugs, if I can only control like.. 60 at a time (in 3 groups of 20), also, what good are they if they just die with the tiniest of hits. Sure I get that this is the incentive to buy units... but there should be *some* chance that you can win on a low level.

Anyway.. its fun.. its free.. and I look forward to playing again!