Simple, subtle and fun
My friends laugh at my main way of judging strategy and urban construction games is whether they have a complex gameplay system that is highly durable - and most of the games that meet my standards have enough size.
I admit that this is indeed true.
But this does not mean that exquisite small games will be kicked out of the praise zone by me - in other words, if a city building game can build a very playable game experience with the simplest system, I will not skimp on praise.
This is "Flooded."
The experience of Great Waves is undoubtedly linear: players need to achieve all of the game's objectives before the rising waters engulf the miner's base - and this goal is usually to collect a fixed resource, defeat a certain number of pirates, or complete a specific story point.
To be precise, the gameplay system of "The Great Waves" focuses on a simple one.
There are only five core resources - water, electricity, iron, copper, and lead. Water is a supply and consumable to maintain the daily work of miners. Electricity is seen as an upgrade resource, as well as a necessity to unlock technology. The remaining three minerals correspond to a building system: iron is a conventional building, copper is an electric building, and lead is a defensive building.
For any strategy game veteran, managing just 5 resources and a single building expansion route is obviously a fairly relaxing and enjoyable operational experience.
But this simple system is not simple in practice. To be precise, the designers of The Great Waves added quite a few variables to the game's operations.
First, the size of the island and the number of resources are completely random. Even if it is the same level of battle, the stage of the game is completely different every time. On top of this are the changing environmental factors as the campaign progresses—rocks, deserts, wastelands, wastelands, and so on. Each randomly combined landscape will bring various Debuffs to the player's miners.
For example, wells in rocky terrain produce polar regions, requiring players to find red soil to drill wells. And if this round of terrain refresh leaves red earth by the sea, the player's most basic and conventional water output will gradually decrease over time - because the rising coastline will gradually eat away at all the land.
At this point, players either decide to hoard water on a large scale until the end of the level, or quickly climb the Age Tree, unlock defensive structures such as dams and artificial land, and exchange other resources for time. This means that at the beginning of each level, players need to quickly make operational and layout trade-offs for the environment.
And what makes this trade-off even more random and uncertain is the era target system.
The levels of "The Great Wave" are divided into 4 eras, and each era corresponds to 2~3 era goals. These goals may be to build a specific building, produce a certain amount of resources, or achieve certain storyline objectives. After completing these fixed objectives, players need to surrender a certain amount of resources to advance to the next era. This demand is the ticket of the next era, and the content of the ticket is completely random.
For example, on the first attempt, the player is told to hand over 4,000 water points in order to continue the storyline. After reopening, the demand for the same node may become 4,000 points of iron or 4,000 points of copper. The specific number of requirements is consistent, but the type of demand basically depends on the player's luck.
This design makes the operation idea of each game different. It may be the first time that players have to face a water-scarce environment and demand to hand over water resources, resulting in a complete shift in the focus of operations to the idea of "open source and throttling". The next one immediately returns to the prairie, where wells are productive and lakes are everywhere, and the player is directly free of water and worries only about tight minerals.
To be precise, these two variable designs with a very "meat pigeon" color contrast the playability of "The Great Wave" with its simple and small gameplay system. If you're playing this game for the first time, you're likely to be fooled by the Great Waves' streamlined graphics and gameplay system.
Although this big loss is for many urban construction players, it is the driving force for becoming more and more courageous, it is the condiment of the gourmet feast, it is the indispensable happy water for barbecue skewers, and it is also the source of happiness for urban construction gameplay.
But – here's a but, what if the player is bullied too badly by the random system, and the game experience is too poor? Don't worry, for those who don't want to challenge their basic skills and luck, the producers of "Great Waves" have also prepared an official plug-in - the relic system for players.
Each time you complete a campaign map perfectly, meaning that you achieve hidden objectives of all eras, players can unlock a relic. The game's two most intense relics, the diamond manuscript and clairvoyance, are available at the very beginning of the game.
Let's start with clairvoyance. Its effect seems unremarkable - get information in advance about the resources needed to advance in the era. But in fact, players can use this relic to lay out related industries in advance, so that the initial operation of the game no longer depends on luck factors, so that there are more fixed variables.
This has brought a huge increase in players' control over the strategic gameplay of urban construction.
And if—I mean if—the prophet plug-in isn't enjoyable, the production team of Great Waves has prepared a more violent diamond pickaxe (yes, the one in my world) for players.
This relic allows players to open the production building slot and mine with their miners by clicking with the mouse. If the player also turns on the "Active Pause Mode", they can stall the flow of time and connect the dots crazy to achieve absolute freedom to consume all minerals - the only limit is your mouse click speed.
In fact, from this point of view, "The Great Wave" is a fun enough game experience for both heavy strategy urban construction enthusiasts and light enthusiasts. If nothing else, the game will receive a high "8" rating from my arms.
But – and there's still a but, There's an extremely subtle flaw in The Great Waves – numerical balance. Here we want to talk about the means that the game producers prepared for players to cope with the waves - dams and artificial floors.
Players are not completely helpless in the face of rising sea levels. To be precise, players can offset the damage caused by a wave to a plot by consuming a certain amount of resources. This is where man-made ground and dams come in.
Both defensive structures consume lead, and there are too many of them.
To be precise, but after the player crosses the second power era and unlocks the building upgrade, the operation idea changes from bigger and stronger to more refined and smaller. Because high-grade buildings have higher capacity and the same floor space. This means that players' demand for large plots of land decreases as the game progresses.
This means that the amount of land players need to defend is actually very limited.
The lead mines in each level of the campaign are enough to support players to protect their core territory and survive the endless waves. This means that as soon as players start producing lead on a large scale, the rising sea surface is no longer a threat. And if the player starts randomly to the technology of "artificial ground stagnant sea surface rising" or "artificial ground has a probability of not being submerged", then the lower limit of resource requirements for survival can be lower.
This somewhat affects the actual experience of the game. To be precise, the gameplay of relying on the dam and artificial floor to drag time to complete the game goal is a bit like a violent method of flying bricks and dropping ten times with one force.
And violent level breaks are always not tied to the good ball area of strategy players.
But overall, "The Great Wave" is still very worthy of the attention of strategy and urban construction enthusiasts. It's actually a bit like Against The Storm, which was released not long ago: both are a combination of walking meat pigeons and urban strategy, and both are level flow game designs with high stage randomness.
However, compared to "Storm City", which has a more serious art style and a more complex resource management system, "Great Waves" is easier to use and has a simpler system. Both heavy enthusiasts and light gamers will be able to get enough experience from this game.
In a word - for all ages. This is obviously the highest rating a strategy city building game can get from me.