Pin Cushion

Brothers and sisters come rally! raise your arms and seize the means of production! drive out the bourgeoisie/ peasants/ police /wildlife? in this Russian revolution themed tale of hungry animals fighting for freedom and more importantly, meat!

Tooth and Tail boasts to be a real time strategy game boiled down and it delivers on that, base building, unit production, recourse gathering and strategic combat all managed by only a few simple commands in this pixel style game from Pocketwatch games, available for both  console and PC.

In short the game is easy to understand, nice to look at and quick to play, if you’re looking for a pick and drop down RTS with some replayability you couldn’t go far wrong with this choice, especially at its low price tag.

The story is set in a 1900’s era Prussian setting land of talking animals, where the eating if meat is considered the mark of the civilized, even by normally herbivorous animals. The nation is in a hunger crisis and there is not enough to go around, so the populous becomes supper for the powerful, leading to a fracturing of society into four major factions. The long coats, industrialists and the well-off in blue counterparting the Common folk, red coated rebels seeking a way out of the oppressive system. A system overseen by the green cloaked KSR, an oppressive police force in peaked caps and jack boots, then lastly the Civilized, a faction swathed in yellow of sentient beasts more animalistic in form than the anthormorphised bulk of the society.

Each fighting for control of the land and their flesh as game talks of the losers being dragged into the victors feasting halls, so there’s more than just the reigns of power on the line in this conflict.

I do wonder if this is another grim future period of the same world as Armello, another game with a Redwallesque world of power struggling animals.

 

The art aesthetic in Tooth and Tail is an isometric pixel look with clear, defined colours that contrast your brightly marked units, essential for them stand out in the frequently busy landscape but you can still lose track of things in the occasionally overpowering weapon fire effects. Painted portraits of your units form the information menus with a matching dark wooden effect interface, a well rendered style running in from the animated intro, all in they definitely feel like they should be being backed by some music from Les Misérables.

As for music, it’s there, that’s as much as I can say about it, the soundtrack is available for sale as well, maybe I’ll notice it more as I am exposed to more of the game but it’s not distracting right now and feels contemporaneous with the setting, all dialogue in the game is backed with a simlish, vaguely Russian muttering that pitches up and down with the size and the gender of the speaker.

 

In game you are presented with your leader, a large standard bearer figure who you control directly, charging them across the battle field while your home bases constantly generates troops from the burrows and warrens you instruct it to dig as your captured farms generate food, the be all and end all recourse of this game.

With your right shoulder button you can plant your flag ordering all units to charge across map to one spot or hold the button to retreat.

With your left shoulder button you can order a specific unit sort selected from the menu at the bottom of the screen to do the same.

Pressing A will build a burrow to generate troops for that selected unit if you are not on a farm space, making base building quick and dynamic. The B button burrows you into the ground to pop up at a selected farm you own.

That’s it, very simple but the levels themselves are randomly generated to set parameters. You take on a missions set in winter to clear out the opposing factions but the map may be a twisting maze of hilly terrain littered with obstacles or it might be divided by a river that drags and slows your crossing. It will still have the same objectives, but indifferent surroundings each time giving a replayability factor to the campaign missions.

 

In conclusion, this is a light fun strategy game with a story you can read into or skim passed

As someone who has played and enjoyed some of the similar style fairs like Command and Conquer this is a nice light entry into the genre, positively shallow compared to depths theses game can go.  If you are a fan of this sort of game give it a go, even if you are not give it a try, it might be good intro into the genre.

So comrades, come rally! For hearth! For home! and for a full belly!

 

 

 

Meanwhile I’ve still be playing X-com 2: war of the Chosen, an expansion to another RTS. It has a wider variety of missions but more of the same really, now with another alien progress bar to deal with, super aliens to drop in at the worst time on missions and more stuff to build in your Skyrangers already limited space, while half the cast of Star Trek the next generation need to be placated.

Oh and yup, my soldiers still miss a point blank shot with a shotgun that had a 95% hit chance far more than 5% of the time. Still calling bullshit on that.