Just came back from PAX, got to sit down and play the full demo. Only a few computers up but oddly not a very popular booth. I loved spacechem though, and was happy to meet the developer and try the new game, because I never get to do cool shit like that. I was also surprised they had it, because they just released the first proper trailer, and I thought it was still early on, but turns out it's almost out! Anyway it was a neat, incredibly polished demo of about five missions, largely tutorial in nature, but it surprised me. It looks turn based, and there are pretty typical mechanics and turn phases for a game that looks like this, but the game just never stops to let you think, the clock is always running. It's pretty cool, and it was fun to play. Basically you have a number of lanes (5 in every one I played), and you're trying to win a certain number of victory points by getting your units to the enemy's side. Every "turn", which is roughly 5 seconds of real time, will see you drawing a new card to your hand, gaining an Action Point which is used to play your cards, all attacks between units in range are resolved, and then the units move forward. You can play cards at any time as long as you have the AP, and you can stop your units from moving forward if you like, but otherwise they will continue to march forward and attack anything in range. In the levels I played, you had two unit types, and two units of each type.
First type was the titular Ironclad: Your initial one can do nothing more than march forward (and move between lanes if you play maneuver cards), but he was actually pretty key to winning the combat missions since he can both tank damage for your other units, and since all ironclads can just trample over enemy ground troops if they can get to them without getting shot first. They were also cheap to put out (1 AP) and good for filling lanes to force your opponent to play cards or lose a point.
The second ironclad (a "light chassis" I believe) starts out as nothing but a beefier version of the first with a couple more hit points, but unlike the weaker version, it can equip weapon cards that you draw, giving it any number of possible attack types. In the demo stages it was definitely the most essential part of your army. Pretty straightforward.
Infantry units are even more straightforward, but using them can be much trickier. They can come with weapons already equipped, and will behave the same as Ironclads, but tend to be much weaker (both available had 2 HP, to the Light Chassis's 5). The available infantry were a Rifleman, with a pretty long range carbine right off the bat, and a Scout, who had no weaponry but could move at double speed (potentially very useful for scoring in empty lanes or capturing objectives). In a straight fight against an ironclad, they won't do very well usually, but if you have another ironclad in front taking the damage, it can be a very effective combination, especially since they're so cheap (if I recall correctly a Rifleman was 2 AP, compared to 4 AP for a light chassis with no weapon). It's easy to see how a couple long ranged riflemen covered by even just the basic ironclad could burn through a great deal of resistance, despite their fragility.
But the coolest part was easily the deck building aspect. Even with just these four units, maneuvering and weapon cards, you had a lot of options to put into your 20 card deck that would severely alter the way you played the game. I've been on a deck building binge lately and this is likely to scratch the itch well. I pre-ordered on steam already.
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