ExcaliBug Preview

Fantasy games that appear on the market usually fall into one of three major groups: First, there are RPGs based on famous board or pen & paper systems. The best example for this sort is the Black Isle's and Bioware's Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale serial. Then, there's the action-clickie game type like the Diablo serial, and finally the 3D adventures that mostly appear on gaming consoles, and only few of them ever get published for PC like the Final Fantasy and Summoner. Summoner opened a new chapter in 3D RPGs and Excalibug is here to prove that.

Ah, that's a house everyone dreams about.

At last we meet ya bug!

The Spain-based Enigma studios brought us this interesting combination of RPG and RTS with sneaker-game elements. Excalibug is an adaptation of the well-known story of the sword in the stone, set in the world of little bugs. The background story provides no more than a setting for a classical party-based RPG. The only difference is that there will be no classical RPG characters, as all characters are little bugs, which at least promises creative and innovative design.

When king Arthur drew the sword from the stone, a metal splinter from the sword fell to the ground; this is how Excalibur got its younger brother - Excalibug. The player controls a small coterie of insects instead of legendary heroes like he would in similar games. The press-demo version I tried out, you can control up to four predefined characters, which will join your quest at different stages of the game. Each of the characters has a small biography and contributes the story in his or her own way. Unfortunately, you cannot talk or interact with party members in game. The only communication with them occurs in non-interactive animated sequences.

Mirna is a tiny ant, the explorer and thief in the party. She will be in charge of stealing things, backstabbing enemies and throwing little rocks at them. This is the central character of the story. Sir Owen is a swift and agile bug (actually, he looks like a beetle) and a real knight. He will be your main fighter and in charge of taking care of larger enemies. Searemoon is a moth and the wizard of the coterie. Searemoon will mostly use spells like storm, rain, tornado and the likes, as little bugs consider these things to be miraculous. The last but not the least, is Ballard. He is a warrior who thinks that he is a termite, but the dramatic story will reveal he is just one courageous bug.

The demo contained only a couple of maps. The first one is sort of a tutorial/introduction in which you lead only Mirna to a lieutenant of the local black-at army to steal a piece of a map. One thing I liked was the idea to make the circles surrounding selected units represent hit-points. One simple click on an enemy soldier will tell you how much energy he has left. The game also incorporates elements of sneaker games; all of the guards and warriors have a vision cone in front of them. When you enter somebody's line of sight, it will turn red. In combat, you can either issue specific orders to your bugs or let them act according to their own AI scripts. The AI is nothing special, but it will let you give all characters equal attention as they can take care of themselves even in some harder situations. The ordinary enemies (for example, ant troopers or mosquitoes) have been made very simple, their AI will tell them to fight you till they die, not ask for help, and have vary short sight and hearing range, so that they won't react unless you get very close. If you decide to run away, they will chase you all over the map. There are some good tings about the AI too. The enemy will practically never follow prescript routes; they will try to explore the terrain in search of their prey, and they even tend to fight amongst themselves. In one fight with two mosquitoes, one of them accidentally hit a fly, which then killed both of them, helping Mirna through that battle. The bosses, however, promise really good and hard fights. They are cunning and keen on using different tactics; for instance, the ant lieutenant kept attacking Mirna, and when she wounded him, he summoned reinforcements, and retreated to heal his wounds. If all the characters acted like this, I guess the game would be too hard. You will be able to buy healing items practically anywhere from normal passers-by or collect them from the crushed bodies of your enemies.

On the second level, you have to go through a swamp with four characters. The graphics are simply lovely and very colorful. The only problem is that when you zoom in too much, you can clearly see the terrain tiles, but this will hopefully be removed in the final version of the game. You can rotate the camera freely just like the Volition's Summoner.

The maps contain funny details like a giant coin (well, giant for the bugs at least) and humongous flowers and plants. The designers paid a lot of attention to detail and proportions. There are side-characters like a Sheppard watching a flock of glowworms, or a funny green fly barking like a dog, outlaw flies and dangerous bug-eating plats. The animation is smooth and fun. It's just like watching a good cartoon. If you zoom in on the characters you'll see they have been designed with a lot of details. When you see an opponent you can see all his stats including his hit-points, level and range of sight and hearing. It is very useful to know all this data, as this will allow you to choose the right strategy for dealing with your enemy. Excalibug is a promising game, and I sure hope it will sell well. You know, for the sake of creativity...