Escape to Kreludor

Written by: Matt

Background

Kreludor is an awful moon. Nobody wants to escape to it. Do not play this game - there is nothing there. (Can I have my kittens back now please?)

Still, those of us who do want to Escape to Kreludor have 2 options, clicking the moon link on the map, or playing this cool game about evading Sloth's spacecrafts over an 11x11 grid. For those of you who play Advance Wars 2, and other turn-based strategy games (Or TBSGs if you're really fancy, or just like acronyms), you have a slight advantage. But a very slight one, as in this game you have the one unit. The common theme which ties in is the aim - kill all the spaceships.

Death & Destruction

There are numerous ways of blowing up Sloth's space fleet. (Note: This is not advised if you want to keep your life - Sloth's known to have a short temper.) The most simple is by getting into such a position to shoot the opponent. When you press the space bar or click on your spaceship, you fire two missiles, out of your left and right side. These missiles travel for 3 squares, and will blow up the first space ship that it comes in impact with it, creating space debris. Note that if you do this, you forfeit your move for the turn. Make sure this won't put you into a bad position.

The other way of getting the spacecraft to blow up is by collision, either with other space ships, or with with against the hard-hitting rocks. The space debris have the same effects as rocks, whose primary use, besides blocking your path, is blowing up a space craft on contact. The blue-grey space craft, the basic ones, will go in any direction to crash into you, even if a carelessly placed rock is in place. If it crashes into a rock, or space debris, then, the space ship will die, however, the improved red spaceship will avoid such impacts. The final method of killing such evil spacebeings is by getting two space crafts to collide. Doing so will kill both space crafts, however, this is rather uncommon, and red space crafts will avoid other spacecrafts in these circumstances. Remember, watch out for comets, white circles with tails, as they are they will chase you the same as the other space ships, but can't be destroyed.

Power-Ups

Each level, you will see a 'power-up', a spiky ball that is a certain colour. These colours relate to the power-up these will give to you. A pink power up gives you 50 bonus points. A green power up will cloak you. This means that Sloth's ships can't pick you up, so will move randomly, very handy when your being chased by all the other ships. A blue power-up will downgrade the other ships types. This is only really useful in the later levels, turning the red upgraded ships into blue-grey basic ships. The red power will em-pulse. This creates will send a force wave, killing all space crafts in a range of 3 squares, however, this doesn't create space debris. Again, useful when you are in the middle of many ravaging space crafts. The rare white power-up will grant you one extra escape pod. The final board feature you see is the warpholes in the corners of the field. These will take you to a random free space on the board, however, this could be next to an enemy space craft, so, beware!

Opinions

What do I think of this game? Is it sufficiently modernised to keep up with the other games? Why do I keep asking rhetorical questions?

Overall, I love the games. There's a lot of strategy involved, and it's surprisingly fun, despite its simple roots. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it was addictive, or even excellent, but it's a fun game that I don't mind playing from time to time. My main problem with it is that it seems a little too much luck-based. I know there are many other luck games that are even more... luckier. Still, for a game that is supposed to be strategy, I dislike the randomness involved. You should be able to plan it all out. Take Chess as an example. If after each turn, you had to roll a dice and take that many pieces of the board, would it really have lasted as long as it has?

So, what do I think? Not the best game on the site, by a long shot. But the graphics are cool, the game has a new and novel idea, and the execution wasn't bad. All in all, this is a nice game!