Band of Drones

The game would not track game time when first released. I enjoy sending scouts forward, disrupting enemy weapons and flipping barriers to secure a room. The barriers are force-fields which allow units and damage to only pass one way. Often you have to be careful when entering a space as you will not be able to see if there are enemies within. It is like a maze, uncovering rooms as you move along the best route you can see. I like that the units have different benefits, so I often split my band ...each with a scout and an assault drone. The scout moving forward and disrupting enemy weapons/flipping barriers with the assault then following to destroy enemy units. Heavies are good for clearing heavily defended rooms. I like that the game is side-view rather than top-down. You have to consider which rooms to advance into, cover, barriers, sight etc. It just seems like a more effective way to present an area than top-down, reagardless; it works very well for this game. I like the backgrounds. You can upgrade drones to have different abilities or fulfil certain tasks. I always unlock hacking and pick the best disrupter for scouts and increase clip capacity and unlock mines for the …

This is a pretty tough little game, even on the "easy" difficulty setting. Essentially, you have a bunch of drones at your disposal, six of which you'll pick to go out and do the next mission. Some are "assault", some are "heavy", and some are "precision" (dictating their stats and weapon of choice). Combat is turn-based and is similar to XCOM, albeit a bit more simplified. Some things do bug me about it...one being that the stationary lasers scattered around the levels can shoot through walls and barriers going the opposite direction. I also don't like that right click activates/fires your weapon...it just felt more natural for it to deselect the unit you have selected. I've shot my own drones by accident more than once because of it. Despite these small problems, the game is fairly enjoyable. Missions take 15-30 minutes a piece, longer if you're overly cautious about your moves, so there's a lot of play time here if you stick with it. You can also upgrade your drones via credits and tech points, with each having its own bank of tech points to spend. Give it a look if you're in the mood for a simplified (but still challenging) XCOM-esque game. https://www.youtube.com/wa…

8/10 Great for the price, but has a feeling that more refinement is in the works If you're feeling nostalgic for Lazer Squad then grab some BoD action. This is one of those simple to pick up but deeper and more nuance-ey than it first appears kinda games, and hit all the buttons for remembering old TBS games on the Amiga. Games like this are the reason for Greenlight. I first became aware of this game in a very early version first submitted to GL a long time ago. Since then I've been following it with interest and made a rare Day-1 Full -Price purchase.

[quote][b]Warning: Broken Game![/b] This game has design/implementation defects that will render this unplayable for many gamers. The developer couldn't work out how to make his Java game work properly with Java, so it crashes to desktop immediately upon launching and cannot be played. The developer knows the game is broken, yet despite refusing to fix it persists in trying to scam people into buying it.[/quote] "Band of Drones" is a broken Java game that doesn't work. What it was supposed to be was a somewhat dumbed down X-Com ripoff with drones and considerably worse graphics. It's unclear whether the developer knew that X-Com was already on Steam, and launching a game that's inferior in all respects on the same platform isn't the brightest decision of all, but then again the developer genuinely thought it would be okay to make a game using Java. Not only that, but they thought it would be okay to sell a Java game on Steam. Not only that, but they can't even get the game to run properly. Not only that, but they're still trying to sell it even if it's broken. I know I've already said that but it's a really, really important point. I can't comment much on the gameplay b…