Interloper Review

Interloper is a 2D real-time multiplayer strategy game. It’s game principle is new and unique, it’s look is practical and it’s functionality and playability are flawless.

Let me kick this off by saying that my predictions for the future in the gaming world rarely ever come true. Nonetheless I will now attempt to play oracle and will say this: Interloper has the potential to be a big one. If you get very good at this game now, maybe there is an e-sports waiting for you.

Interloper as the real-time strategy game that it is automatically has a competitive feel to it, that just comes with the genre. It’s only problem could be that it might be “solvable” due to a lack of complexity and/or variety. Both players have the same character, called the Sentinel that is capable of conquering areas of the map. The goal is to dip 75% of the map in your color. While you do that though, your opponent can win areas back by simply moving his sentinel there too. This is where your drones come in. Drones are manufactured automatically in assemblers and can be upgraded in factories as long as they are connected to a power source. This gives you a variety of four different types of drones (one “standard” and three upgraded versions) with different strengths and weaknesses. These drones are your tools for both securing the areas of the map you already conquered and smashing down your opponent’s defences to take over his fields or at least disconnect his assemblers and factories from power sources.

Let’s talk game theory: Have you and your friends ever indulged in the awesomeness that is Age of Empires II Multiplayer battles? Well, if you have, then you know that this is all good fun until the first one of your friends starts looking up strategies online. Then it becomes less fun, because you basically can’t beat him unless you look up strategies yourself and learn them by heart. At this point, we can call a game “solved”. One side plays the British perfectly, the other side plays the Osman Empire perfectly, the will always win because that’s just the math behind the game. That’s what made Starcraft such a big e-sports game, it isn’t solvable.
In Interloper, all the aspects of the RTS genre are reduced to their minimum, to their very core. The battling, the unit system, resource procurement are all stripped of their arguably unnecessary decor features you will find in a lot of other contemporary RTS titles. While I – as a minimalist  – think that all kinds of stripping are a fair and noble endeavour (see what I did there), Monogon Games need to be very aware that people might get bored with the game once they “solved” it.

I myself am neither pro-gamer nor math genius enough to figure out if the game actually is solvable as it is right now and let’s face it, neither can you, so let’s just enjoy it 🙂 – Now back on track:

There are prettier games out there and to be honest, sometimes, in the heat of battle, you will overlook a few of your units, or hostile movement on the map and while – don’t get me wrong here – the game does look beautiful, you have to wonder if slimy sperm cell like looking graphics really were the best choice for this game.

Speaking of sperm cells: We haven’t talked about the story yet. Well, there is none. There is a tutorial that teaches you all the basics and then basically just sets you free into the wilderness of multiplayer, which is the very heart of the game, five-minute multiplayer matches.

Time to level with you, dear reader, Interloper is the game I personally have been looking for (I have obviously been looking in the wrong places). It is a real-time strategy gem that is complex enough to make me feel similarly strategically engaged as any title of the Total War series, yet simple enough so I don’t have to read a 40 page manual before I can win my first game in multiplayer. The game does not exceed in any aspect of game development, but combines all the different disciplines of making games so well and so convincingly, that for this, I give my first 10/10 rating. Come online and let’s take your sperm to war!

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.