Golem Gates - Create strategic depth

braini (61)in #gaming • 6 years ago (edited)

You hear it more and more often; various developers from a large studio split up to a smaller studio and then make small-scale games. However, only part of this story is true at Golem Gates. This game is the love child between Laser Guided Games and Hollow Earth Inc. Laser Guided Games consists of a number of former employees of Epic Games, the people behind, among others, Gears of War. Hollow Earth Games is also an art studio that has mainly worked on films. Iron Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War include projects that they have worked on. Those names alone made me want to try out Golem Gates. And guess what? Golem Gates can absolutely not be called a small-scale game.

What are Golem Gates at all? In the story these are portals through which various beings can get through. These beings are your enemies and have to be stopped by the so-called Harbingers. This description probably sounds very vague and there is a good reason for that. Golem Gates is currently still in early access, only a small part of his story campaign is still available.

Create strategic depth

What we do know is that it is a mix between RTS gameplay and card games. You can build a deck, where each card represents a monster, attack or passive force. You can then use this on a real-time battlefield to complete various objectives. Examples of this are devastating environments or trying to survive a host of enemies. See the gameplay as a mix between Yu-Gi-Oh and Starcraft.

Of course you can use XP to unlock new cards, so you can slowly build up your deck and become stronger. To add some strategic depth, it is also possible to set up a small set of cards as trading cards. Before the start of each match you can exchange that select number of cards, just enough to be able to vary in your playing style.

Extra energy

During the RTS gameplay you have to take your Harbinger into account. If you die, you will lose the round. If you kill the enemy Harbinger, you have just won. In the meantime, it is important to keep exploring the playing field and to conquer certain points. These points give you extra energy, which is needed to start new monsters and skills. It is not possible to immediately deploy a whole army of monsters and immediately flood the enemy. Your energy bar will only fill slowly, so you have to think carefully which cards you play first. Do you immediately call up a number of monsters to go to battle? Or do you build your defenses first?

The first impressions were not great. Although there are some big names behind the game, I did not find the style very original. In addition, the environments that were already free were not particularly fascinating. Until now it was limited to gray industrial environments where even Doom 3 seemed interesting.

Silhouettes

The design of your samples was slightly better. Clear attention has been given to their silhouettes and the fact that they have to indicate exactly what kind of unit it is. For example, the gigantic, bulky robots immediately give a sense of strength, while the dog-like units transmit speed and vulnerability.

In terms of content, Golem Gates is only a meager experience, which unfortunately also results in a thin article. However, the mixed feelings in the game remain with me. Especially the story is a cause of that, which did not immediately fascinate me. I also hope that the environments and objectives will show more variation in the future. The full version will be released on March 28, after which we will undoubtedly know more.

Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it!