This game rocks. Why? tl.dr: Even in the 0.3 beta version, it’s an RTS with a great balance between resource management and strategic problems with multiple viable responses. Very tight systems, and I get the feeling it’s got a very skill ceiling for RTS veterans (I’m finding it tough but manageable on 2/5 difficulty).
THE FUN STUFF:
- Solid balance between city-building elements, tower defense, and RTS maneuvering that keeps things fresh. Lot of customizable factors go into choosing your starting bonuses (faction/captain/ship, each with different bonuses) that keep things fresh and offer a lot of new strategies.
- Difficulty scales very quickly; get a relaxed game in on the lowest difficulty and learn the systems, but if you crank up the enemy power or shorten the time between enemy waves, surviving long enough to win truly makes you feel like a galaxy-brain strategy god (or just someone who got a miracle).
Graphic design is a charming synthesis of 90s isometric RTS and pixel art. Unit silhouettes are easily distinguishable (THIS IS A BIG DEAL).
- Units and turrets look and sound good; mortar teams fire a lovely arcing grenade that explodes easily, “tortoise” mobile missile platforms give a satisfying WOOSH as they fire swathes of rockets, flamethrower units and towers have a great particle effect as they fry everything in front of them. The highest tier turret… It’s good stuff.
- Firing orbital weapons feels very good, and they’re very powerful. The only thing better than pinpoint blasting an elite enemy with a laser from space is blasting 100 enemies with a fully-upgraded beam laser from space. Missiles and gatling cannons are appropriately thumpy.
- The pacing is tight and even frantic on harder modes, but with pause, you can stop and plan out everything from city placement to army movements and logistics. Good for people with low reflexes/APM (me). The game has a medium complexity level when it comes to building a colony with everything you need to survive. You need to put a good amount of thought into planning a functional and also defendable colony, but you’re also not wracking your brain with overwhelming systems.
SLIGHTLY LONGER EXPLANATION OF FUN STUFF:
- Choose a captain, faction, “ship,” and up to four perks to keep things fresh. Lots of combos for lots of strategies.
- No worker units; resources are gathered through placement of multiple styles production buildings on/adjacent to certain terrain. You’re protecting these, and the enemy (goo/robots) have multiple ways of getting at them. The earliest decisions in a round are where to place these. You’re weighing the reward of expanding to the edge/outside of your starting perimeter against the risk of attracting enemy aggro.
- You get a captain (akin to a “hero” unit from Warcraft, etc.) with three actives and passives that you can change and swap as you develop. Other units generally do not have active abilities, placing From Glory to Goo on the midpoint of the general “RTS complexity spectrum” that exists only in my brain.
- Multiple resources: “effort” and civilians required for everything (generated through housing, earned in fixed cycles), water and energy which are generated, reserved and used quickly, and "crystal, ore, and isotopes,” which are stockpiled. They’re all interwoven; generating effort and civilians with housing requires water, pumping water requires energy, generating energy requires civilians, units and everything else requires a combo of all of these. You can operate at a deficit if you overextend or get enemies wrecking your stuff, and there’s ways to build back after a tough battle.
- Simple tech tree, X tiers (Eight? Can’t check because I’m typing this at a library computer, to give you an idea of how From Glory to Goo has gripped me) with 3-6 new units/production buildings/military buildings available each. I appreciate that you won’t be picking the same research order every time; resource availability, map topography and choke points, and your choice of captain/ship/faction influence what research is a priority.
- You’ve got a “ship panel,” a kind of boardgame-esque city builder minigame where you send resources from your colony to your ship to get benefits like faster production, radar for visibility, and orbital guns. These feel VERY satisfying to use on enemies. Also has resource balancing! If this sounds like it sucks, good news: you can invest minimally in the ship to simply keep it safe and focus on your colony. But, I recommend putting effort into getting some powerful ship bonuses.
- Enemies operate in two states: normal, where they sit in swarms outside your colony perimeter until you engage, and wave, where they periodically gang up to kill you in tower-defense style. Survive 5-8 waves and you win (campaign and survival scenarios have other victory conditions). If you don’t put down proper sonic infrastructure (ground thumpers) before exploring (or choose units with light footfalls), goo enemies will spawn as you walk around. Even in normal state, goo units will eventually probe your defenses with increasingly developed ways to get past your defenses (spawner goo to overwhelm you with numbers, flying goo to surpass walls, cannon goo to take out defensive structures, sonic goo that disrupts your thumpers, really jacked goo that just kills everything).
- The pause button is a godsend here and very helpful for managing turrets/units for defense.
Something that really builds depth is the choice of methods for acquiring resources. Unlike an Age of Empires or Starcraft, where you have a worker, a resource, a drop point, and that’s it, you’ve got multiple ways to get what you need depending on your situation. For example: Regular pumps, available from the start of the game, pull water from terrain: more from lush tiles, some from grass tiles, little from dirt tiles. They take up a lot of space. If you have space, great! If your base is getting crowded, they become less effective. Geyser pumps, unlocked early in the tech tree, have to be built on specific tiles, but are reliable and give a lot of water. Hydroforming platforms, late in the tech tree, spend a lot of energy to turn dirt to grass and grass to lush, making regular pumps viable again. And, you can offset the water cost of housing by building life support systems near them, virtually freeing up water for you to use. Every resource besides population has at least one alternative acquisition method. On some maps, you can get by with one method. On others, you need to adapt and expand to survive. Probably my favorite part of the whole game.
NOTABLE UNFINISHED STUFF
For a solo dev early access game in 0.3 beta, From Glory to Goo is very polished. There's already a full experience with a lot of variety here. But!
- Some tutorials panels are unfinished or bugged. Example: When you meet a minor alien tribe, the tutorial pop-up that plays is a repeat of the starting tutorial. A couple of null ones come up when encountering later concepts (i.e. late-game enemies). Not a dealbreaker, but noticeable.
- Some systems still feel a bit undeveloped compared to the main gameplay loop. i.e.
- Alien tribes (mentioned) can be found; you either fight them for their land (TYPICAL HUMAN SETTLERS), ignore them, or build a road to their base and ally with them. Allying with them allows you to build a handful of their units, get line-of-sight, and turn them against surrounding goo. They're a good addition, but feel slightly underexplored (outside of one leader who gets some unique bonuses).
- The ship management panel, while having some neat bonuses, also feels like it has potential for more interactivity. You can build five types of cannonry, a module for research on for more effort, and one for unit experience. What else could the ship hold...
I’ve only just started campaign mode and haven’t tried the operations mode; very looking forward to these and whatever else Stratagem Blue is cooking up post 0.3.
