Right if you missed out on hearing about the Steam Summer Sale, you must've been in a coma or something. Lots of games were heavily discounted and where we might brakes from buying a game at full price there's something about 50% off that just gets folks in a spending mood. I like buying games cheap, but I like buying GOOD games cheap even more. I've played a couple of the other games by the publisher, Strategy First and while it was a mixed bag they were at least generally interesting. Considering the fact that this game costs around $5 US when it's NOT on sale, well I figure that for just about $6 tt it would have to really suck to not be worth a shot. (I bought it for less than $1 US. First I was like :S then I was like Right now it's on sale for Halloween for about $2.50 US. Visuals: Mostly it's in third person over the shoulder view that we're accustomed to from games like the sims or just about any RTS. The view makes it possible to see a wide area or zoom in on the action and ingame cinematics often take you to a ringside seat. The whole game was somewhat cartoonish and that's fine because the concept lends itself very well to that style. It's always going to be safer to steer away from the uncanny valley and more so when the point of the game involves using minions as ghosts to scare away game characters for points. Here's the link to Steam's Screeshots Sound: I can't comment at all on the sound in the game, because playing on wine, the sound cuts out by the time I hit the first loading screen. Doesn't bother me too much as I can always just put some music on to listen to while I'm playing. Story: Hmmm take 1 part Dungeon Keeper, 2 helpings of Ghost Busters, and a whole crapload of puns and homages to pop culture and you might be pretty close. Basically you are in charge of a stable of ghosts each having their own set of abilities and limitations. By choosing a set number for each level, you are required to achieve a particular effect. It might be to scare off everyone in the area, or to have them perform a particular task. Toss in a few trapped "restless" spirits that need you to free them in very particular ways before they can join your stable and ghost hunting opponents who can banish your minions and you've got the basic gameplay mechanic. Your minion's abilities cost Plasm (what I'd call "mana"), in each level you start with a fixed amount and can build up more by scaring people, giving access to the more expensive abilities. Scaring people also affects your score tallied after you've completed the level. Mild scares are easy to get but worth very little. Making mortals faint or go insane is worth a lot more but often much harder to achieve in a limited time. This is especially true if you consider that not everyone is going to believe in the supernatural, making it much harder to scare them without laying down some ground work first. One thing making it even more interesting is the fact that people have very different fears, both conscious and subconscious so what scares one person out of their wits will be almost shrugged off by another. Choosing the ghosts you intend to use so you have a wide enough arsenal to hit every fear while producing the effects you need is challenging. You can always upgrade your ghosts by spending some of those points you earned but they tend to be highly specialised in what skills they can and cannot learn. To cap it all off, each ghost can only be bound to a specific set of objects (often stationary) in a level. So for the most part their use is highly specific to a particular room, location or individual. There are skills that can help you overcome this hurdle but often those are ones that you'll have to buy later in the game. One might think that a lot of these things seem inherently evil, but that's where a good story comes into play. The people you are tasked with scaring off are often not the best of all possible people. Frat boys who took a hazing too far, a mobster who bumped off some of his former employees, a mad scientist intent on capturing a particularly powerful ghost you are hoping to free, a guy who is performing a ritual that causes a headless rider to wander the streets of a sleepy little hamlet. You get the idea. Your mission: Free the trapped ghosts. Scare the mortals. Turn them nuts. Avoid getting your minions banished and rack up a high scare, I mean score. Gameplay: Fairly solid with many of the usual touches of RTS as you do have to deploy your troops to produce particular effects. Use your resources wisely as they are limited and if you don't keep building, your plasm/mana level will drop and you'll no longer be able to use those skills. Sometimes the element of luck plays too much of a part, waiting for a particular individual to get to a particular point or perform an action can be utterly frustrating. There may have been ways to force the effect to happen sooner, but if that's the case I've not been able to figure out how. Bonus points are awarded for finishing levels quickly. The ghosts can be put into three distinct categories, cheap, medium and expensive. This is not to be confused with their ability to get the job done, and I've sometimes found myself substituting a much cheaper ghost in and getting the job done just as quickly. Apart from replaying the missions to get a high enough score to upgrade your ghosts there doesn't seem to be too much replay value apart from just plain wanting to get the time bonuses that'd tell you that you figured out the fastest way to do the level. Overall: Cool time waster, some levels can take quite some time, others can be finished very quickly with the right ghost and the right powers. (There's a level that you can literally do with two ghosts each only using a single power once.) There were some things that I'd like to see more of, but I'd say that it was a good mix and for the price I certainly didn't regret it. If you ever do get around to playing it, look at the names of the missions and the mortals. They spoof the heck out of Weird Science, GhostBusters, Full Metal Jacket and M*A*S*H* (if anyone is old enough to remember that), The Witches of Eastwick and a whole bunch of others. Here's the steam link once more. Read full article...
