Warlocked (Game Boy Color)

Releasing a real-time strategy game on the Game Boy Color almost sounds like a joke. RTS games require quick and reactive management of large groups of troops and can be rather unforgiving if you don’t manage tasks like resource gathering and troop movements in a timely manner. Warlocked seems to have understood this, and rather than trying to cram the concepts found in RTS computer games on a tiny console with only a d-pad and two action buttons, developer Bit Studios aims to capture the same feeling of tense strategic battles in miniature. You won’t be commanding massive armies, but the condensed scope is designed around intelligently in terms of what individual units can do and how both sides of a conflict can attempt counter play all while a surprisingly good soundtrack plays to underscore it all.

 

Warlocked is set in a magical fantasy world where the human armies under Queen Azarel and the Beast soldiers of Chief Zog vie for dominance. While the humans are presented as the more benevolent forces focused more on repelling aggression while the Beasts more often push into enemy territory, both sides can be played as in the campaign and each will culminate with them attempting to completely wipe out the other side to claim their holdings. Both campaigns consist of 13 missions each and manage to avoid too much conceptual overlap even when they are drawing from the same ideas. Both do kick off with some tutorial missions so you aren’t forced to choose one to understand the systems at play, but once you learn the ropes you will soon be required to effectively and intelligently manage your small bands of soldiers and properly allocate the allotted resources you’ll collect across the map. Some missions will focus on providing a huge group of troops to start with but no reserves so you must make sure not to wear your forces thin, others will have many enemies already stationed all throughout the map and you’ll need to scrounge what you can to start clearing a safe space for your armies. Some times you won’t even have your troops starting near your base and need to find it by carefully scouting ahead while others will even have you control only the helpless workers trying to sneak out of an enemy base, a good deal of creativity found within the concept while there are still a good deal of missions focused primarily on the task of growing your strength and deploying soldiers to try destroy enemy soldiers and bases.

During a normal battle in one-on-one multiplayer or in the more typical single player missions you’ll start with a base and a small group of workers. Workers are used for simple tasks like gathering wood or mining gold to help afford construction work or the training of soldiers, but in a fight a worker is totally helpless and is better kept at base doing jobs or potentially repairing damaged buildings. Early stages of a match involve gradually gathering what you need to build a barracks and start producing more troops, but even this early part can be risky as you don’t want to stray into enemy territory and catch their eye. Maps start out covered with question mark tiles so you can only see where your own troops are operating, but by heading into an area you reveal it permanently. Sending a worker out to find useful areas and resources is smart, but you might stumble into enemy land, AI opponents already starting a level with a plethora of structures built and troops deployed. Single player missions thus end up mostly about working up to the level you can start clearing out their encampments and forces.

 

Once you do have a barracks up you can start training knights and archers, both sides of the war functionally similar save for a few special units. A small pack of knights and archers can be easily selected by holding down a button and dragging to grab the whole group and small conveniences like being able to designate different teams within that squad help for a little bit of micromanagement, but it is a touch difficult to exclude a unit when things get a bit cluttered. Similarly, even when you tell your troops to go to a specific location, sometimes they might have strange ideas on how to get there so you might need to reissue an order to an odd wanderer so they walk forward a few steps instead of taking a needless and dangerous long way around. Generally though once you understand things like holding down a button to deselect a soldier or which button instructs a troop to defend, it all becomes second nature rather than an impediment to managing your forces. Usually though conflicts will involve smaller groups competing against each other. While you can whip up a group of ten to truly trounce opposition, a pack of five is a fairly burly force to head into danger with which is fortunate since you expand your population in groups of five by building new farms. Your population limit is tied to the farms but as long as you have enough gold and lumber you can quickly replace soldiers who die in battle, troops expendable by nature but careless play may leave you high and dry when the enemy starts to press in. AI foes have less limits than the player, especially since they can autonomously send in troops while you need to manage your forces with only so much attention possible at once, so having the AI not as capable or aggressive to start in a mission makes clearing them a more likely prospect than if they attempted to imitate human play.

 

Building up your forces, learning the layout of the land, and sending troops in to destroy structures and thin the enemy ranks ends up a pretty satisfying process thanks to the game balancing around the limits imposed on the player by such a simple game console, and by mixing up mission structure it can ensure it can occupy you with something novel before it brings in a new battlefield type to shake up the core idea. Some areas are wide open so both sides can be attacked from multiple angles, but other maps include cramped areas reined in by cave walls, indestructible battlements where foes attack from above as you find your way around them, and bridges that form choke points. Aggressive forward building can expand your operations outside of just your main camp and certain battlefields can be altered heavily by the removal of the forests needed for increasing your resources, it sometimes smart knowing when not to try and snag something useful since it might open up navigation opportunities for the opposing side. However, there are also benefits to trying to head out into the map even when you’re not looking for trouble as special units can be found and used against your foe.

Dragons are the game’s most powerful unit and having one on your side first involves safely escorting a baby dragon from its nest back to your base. High health, powerful attacks, and a resistance to typical ground troops makes a dragon a fearsome ally indeed, and while towers can be built to automatically fire on nearby enemies and the main hall packs its own arrows as well, a dragon can still lay waste to a good deal of troops and structures before its time is up. Players are restricted to a single dragon active at a time but game-controlled armies can end up having multiple, but since they won’t travel the map unless provoked you have time to plan your offensives and weigh up potential losses in trying to eliminate such a powerful defense. Knights and archers were already differentiated by having one be tough and strong but the other making up for vulnerability by firing from afar, but dragons add a new idea to combat as attention centralizes on taking down a devastating foe.

 

Wizards also exist as an additional unit type and they are certainly the most varied contribution to how the action unfolds. While the basic ideas of army management and developing your resources do provide some room for strategies to develop and for moments of exciting conflict, wizards are almost like wild cards as their powers can introduce all sorts of strange abilities and boons to those who use them. Also being located around maps in single player and requiring rescue like the baby dragons, a wizard will only fight for the opposing side if you’re up against another player who owns the game. In single player though they are a unique tool for turning the tables, their powers able to circumvent dangers or provide aid in special ways. If you get Sweatwiz on the field your workers will work in double time, Poisonwiz will increase the damage your archers can deal to make them a threat to be feared, and Crowwiz will let you turn a troop into an untouchable crow who can freely fly around the area to scout out the map. Some wizards will only work for one side of the conflict, this obviously true of Queen Azarel and Chief Zog who both provide the benefit of training troops faster, but others include the likes of Elvenwiz who can turn any of your troops into an archer on the human side.

 

Normally you can only have two wizards out at a time plus any you manage to save in the course of the level, but if a wizard dies, they are lost in terms of your growing collection. Wizards saved in one mission can be called in on others and in the game’s multiplayer component, players are even able to get duplicates for the purpose of trading with other owners of Warlocked. In a helpful touch, wizards found in one campaign will also be available in the other provided they don’t have any allegiance restrictions, but this allows for certain wizards you might get late to still have a chance to shine. There are certainly some less useful wizards, some impressive sounding ones like Stormwiz risky to deploy since their focus is on attacking and you’re often better off calling in a wizard that can provide a passive buff or situational advantage. Get Stealthwiz casting their spell on your workers and they can mine resources right under the enemy’s nose, or if a group of soldiers are raining arrows on you from above, a wizard like Mudwiz whose powers seem weak finds his moment as he can turn those archers into useless mud. If there’s a huge group of enemies in one place, Poxwiz can infect one with a disease that can potentially spread and clear out the whole pack unless they move apart, and while tailing the scrambling troops is limited by your simple controls, you can still plan around your wizard powers rather well to evolve the kinds of options that exist out on the battlefield.

THE VERDICT: The core real-time strategy battles of Warlocked manage to be entertaining because of the smart balance involved in the basic troops and buildings, the story missions getting appropriately difficult near the end of each campaign to necessitate smart play that mixes caution and risk. Adding the wizards into the mix opens up a whole new layer of strategy that provides a variety of ways to plan and react. Creative mission structures keep the campaigns varied while multiplayer matches can see the true potential of wizards and diverse strategies shine, this Game Boy Color RTS adapting well to the necessary concessions to work on the system without losing its tactical edge.

 

And so, I give Warlocked for Game Boy Color…

A GOOD rating. While a fairly condensed package in terms of what variables are in play, Warlocked has a good handle of how to design scenarios around interesting interactions between them and has the wizards to inject some unique options. The story manages to conceive of a good range of missions that don’t always follow the same format while still pushing against the player hard enough in its stages to truly demand some degree of strategy and intelligent play, so while there is a fair bit of sending in a pack of soldiers to clear as much as they can before they fall, the underpinnings like resource and time management do add the right amount of complexity to the affair. Your controls and small screen aren’t going to be strained trying to battle on multiple fronts nor will you need to keep too many balls in the air at once to stay competitive, so while it’s not as layered as it could be, it instead focuses on a lot of direct action and making sure you have concocted an appropriate plan to work your way towards victory. The game does take a bit to gain steam since you need to gather the wizards first and both campaigns having early tutorial missions thins the structured content, but if you do have someone to play against you also can extract a lot more variety from the game. In an unusual touch there are also minigames to be found hidden in maps so you can play poker or complete a slide puzzle to earn gold for the multiplayer army-battling, but mostly Warlocked does keep its focus set on making sure its handful of ideas are balanced in a way where the work towards battling the stationed armies in single player missions provides satisfying payoffs.

 

While the mechanics are designed the way they are because of the Game Boy Color’s relatively weak hardware and limited control options, the battles still provide entertaining tactical tests. It does feel like ideas that make it succeed would thrive more in a deeper experience, the wizards a wonderful shakeup where you’re trading certain advantages dynamically to try and adapt to the shifting state of the battlefield. Warlocked isn’t just impressive despite its restrictions though. It may not be close to a war simulator or anything, but its battle system has a good degree of variety to how its presented to stave off repetition, versatility not the strong suit of your minions but special scenarios still draw out enough to keep the battles exciting and sometimes even fairly difficult.