It’s hard to not get one’s tentacles in a tangle with a title like Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD – Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector’s Edition (without Avatars!), so just go with it.

Zeboyd Games is releasing the ramped-up version of their Xbox Live Indie mega-hit Cthulhu Saves The World in Spring of 2011. It promises new game modes, additional playable characters, brand-spanking-new dialogue, more spells and a slew of new jokes promising to not only further skewer the works of HP Lovecraft, but also to give the over-saturated idiom of JRPGs a sound, repeated curb-stomping. Spells and critters have all been re-balanced, and new challenges await even the most masochistic of JRPG enthusiasts. Keep a keen eye out for veiled hints and Zeboyd’s next title!

Never heard of Cthulhu Saves the World? Read our full review here!

For all the details of Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD – Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector’s Edition (without Avatars!) head to Zeboyd Games’ webpage.

Developer Summary

Four Corners:

Use ninjas, witches, archers, vikings, samurai, and a slew of other units to destroy your opponent’s capitol and make yourself the superior season! You will have to conquer spires and golems as you battle and make them your own. Design custom maps, possess units for special abilities and auras, and discover all the secrets!

Scatha:

This campaign-based real time strategy game is completely unique from other games of its genre. You will be dealing with your units very closely as you battle through the varied types of levels of the campaign, leading Scathaedia to victory over the League of the Immortals!

What We Think: Welcome to the XBLIGR Double Stuff Review

Much like the revered and, yes, even groundbreaking, Oreo cookie, we here at XBLIGR are attempting to cram two ooey, gooey games in to one graham-cracker sandwich of a review. The pending dessert-which at hand is being produced specifically from two RTS games by Living Creature Studios. One half is the traditional, story driven RTS: Scatha, while the other half is the more simplistic yet accessible RTS/action game four corners. While each game brings something unique to the ever expanding realm of RTS games, the real question is: Do either of these games taste like the real deal, or do they leave a bad taste in your mouth like those god-awful no-name imposter brand cookies? (You can’t even dip those things in milk without them falling apart!)

What’s on the Surface?

Four Corners:

Four Corners is definitely the more lighthearted and whimsical of the two titles. There is pretty much no story to speak of other than you are a season at war with other seasons. But fear not, be you Spring, Summer, Fall or Winter, you’ll find plenty of interesting and creative characters that your kingdom can produce in order to help you become the one true season (I’m cheering for Summer). Actually if there’s one thing that makes this game endearing, it’s the plethora of stylish but simple creatures that the varying empires (seasons) can produce. Level design is fairly lacking though, with only a few dashes of design here and there to keep the areas looking like more than just a large flat color square. I can appreciate a cartoonish approach, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be completely devoid of detail. There are 5 pre-created levels in total, but many of them come across looking like the same basic locale with a slightly different color palette.

The characters do once again help though to add life to the scenery, with some nice, albeit basic animations and fairly well done sound effects. A variety of well crafted sounds also enhance the ambiance, which surprisingly does help to cover over the obvious lack of detail in the surrounding environments. Good sound design can do wonders, which is something that can seem like an afterthought occasionally with indie titles.

To everything (turn, turn, turn...)

Scatha:

In trying to express this game in the most modern-vernacular possible, it’s clear that Living creature studios is trying to go with a more “epic” undertaking with the episodic RTS Scatha. Artistically, Scatha does a much better job in crafting its settings than the overly simplified Four corners, and throughout the games 7 different stages you will find objects and details unique to each specific location.

Although the world of Scatha is more lovingly crafted, I didn’t find that I was as impressed with the character design as I was with that of Four Corners. Really there are only five creatures (Miners, Hoplites, Shrouds, Phalanx and Colossus) with a “light”(good) and “dark”(evil) version of each, and although they are fairly creative in concept, none of them seem to have much personality on the battle field. All of them apparently move the same speed and they all mostly attack just by (what seems like) running directly into the opposition and shoving them around (except for your shrouds, who use lightning bolts as a ranged attack). The design isn’t bad, it’s just nothing stellar and doesn’t help to immerse you in the story that the game is trying to provide. And at only 7 episodes (levels) long, The story is never able to get into much detail and is done before you know it. Mostly I would choose to have no story at all as opposed to one that ends up being contrived because it is so rushed. I much prefer Four Corners approach of you are a season, kill the other seasons. Simple, yet poetically profound. The music is definitely a high-note in Scatha though, with a variety of tracks that help to create a different feeling in each episode.

What’s in the Middle?

Four Corners:

The game play in Four Corners, much like its cartoony visual aesthetic, takes a highly simplified “bubble gum” approach to its RTS elements. It’s the low-fat, low sugar RTS. Basically you are given a kingdom that generates its own funds and is clearly self-sufficient when it comes to keeping itself running, no assembly or upkeep required. Your only responsibilities lie in how you choose to defend your castle and how you choose to attack the opposing factions. You basically operate as a glorified barracks. In this however is the where the strategy portion reveals itself which, although highly accessible, also has a certain amount of depth to it which in turn is quite engaging and can be fairly intense at moments. You can produce up to 5 different types of soldiers all with their own abilities (archers, magicians, esper-type creatures) and on top of that, you can set what type of mission you wish your newly born soldiers to perform, do you want them to engage in an all out assault on the enemy kingdom, hang around and pick off incoming baddies, or hell, why not go and possess a golem for a little added oomph to your attack.

One very interesting, and for me useful technique in this game was the ability to “possess” any one of your adapted army and control them directly. I found it helped to involve me a little more in the action and I found it broke up the tedium of simply producing unit after unit and then idly watching while they did their thing. The Controls themselves don’t do anything innovative, but they don’t do anything wrong either. A simple game with simple controls is just fine with me.

Scatha:

Scatha is almost note for note, a typical RTS game, with just a few subtle changes. As in many games of its genre, the actions will boil down to things such as: mine for money (currency), produce offensive units and do research to help you build things that you might not already know about, oh and of course do battle with neighboring “evil” factions. One unique addition is the ability to combine your lesser (grunt) type warriors into something called a phalanx, but even after creating these creatures the game ends of becoming just a “go there, kill this” stroll through a couple of different levels. Also there is definitely an issue with the games pathfinding AI, so much so that in the tutorial they even have to tell you that you may have to click a couple of different areas on the map if you want your selected unit to reach its destination. Or in other words, the characters may be too dumb to find their way around objects. This sadly occurred fairly often especially on some of the more cluttered levels.

Don't laugh; after the find a way around this pyramid, they gon beat'ya ass

There was a chance for this game to be more than it was, but I found there was surprising lack of things to do in it. After I had completed the game once I found almost no reason to go back and play more of it. It doesn’t really do anything wrong, but at a fairly short 7 levels (8 if you count the last level or climax, that’s inaccessible from the opening menu) and disappointing lack of innovation in terms of mission type, there wasn’t really enough to hold my interest to make me want to go back for more.

The games 3 difficulty levels don’t really do well to work on a curve either, the “not bad” setting involves your enemies only “attacking when attacked” which was way too easy, while the next setting “slim chance” sees waves of enemies decimating your kingdom within minutes of starting the level. There was a “you won’t win” setting that I didn’t even want to experience, although I can only assume that the title was accurate.

What’s in the Bag?

So, did these games come close to being the real deal, or a mere third-rate no-name brand?

Four Corners:

Though simple on the surface with a fairly childish facade, this game does just what it needs to do to feel like a successful indie title. Cute characters and stylish sound effects really help to cover over the sadly bland looking world maps, and there is enough innovation within the game play to warrant a second visit or two. Add in local multi-player and the ability to build your own custom-maps (a VERY basic editor but a nice edition none the less) and you have a fairly well crafted title.
Final thoughts: Tasty, Almost the real deal, I have room for one or two more.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Scatha:

I find what happens with many indie games is that they strive for a little too much and end up falling a little flat. While there is clearly more visual/audio polish on Scatha, the actual game play, storyline and character AI is slightly underwhelming. Though fundamentally sound in terms of RTS features, a few more mission types and a slightly more “fleshed out” story could have made this a stronger title, but as it stands it is currently short and forgettable.
Final thoughts: No-name brand. A little stale. One was enough.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Four Corners and Scatha are both available at Xbox Live Marketplace for 80 Microsoft points each.

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