Amoebattle Review: Life of Colorful Cells

Amoebattle
DSiWare (500 points/$4.99)
grab
Real Time Strategy

Is the world of DSiWare games still producing good games? Amoebattle from Intrinsic Games is making a clear case that the DSiWare service still live and kicking. Amoebattle is a real time strategy game that involves the use of microscopic amoebas to control and battle.

Divided into 12 chapters, each ranging from 15 minutes to an hour, the game gives you plenty to do and explore. You explore each chapter with a simple set of goals. Sometimes it’s just exploring and acquiring new DNA of amoebas to control and other times it’s to stop conflicting amoebas from destroying the environments. Each chapter brings new amoebas to control or new weapons to try out.

The game does a great job in progression, allowing you to try out new amoebas to control and new tricks to try while not leaving you too overwhelmed. AMI, your robotic guide, does a great job to introduce you to the game world and any information that needs to be brought up. Not once, does your guide feel unwelcoming. Each chapter only starts you off with a few amoebas, but with a little dividing and mutating, your squad will become a nice size to control.

With a nice colorful look to it, the game really stands out with its visuals. The environments are very detailed with nice looking sprites for the amoebas you control and battle. Even AMI is highly detailed to show off when it is upset or thinking, allowing yourself to feel for the character somewhat.

The game makes great use of the touch screen with its different controls. Along with a button to select all, you can easily draw a circle around a few or as many of your amoebas as you want to control. Don’t forget to assign your new group to one of four set buttons, allowing you to reselect them easily in the future or move to their location on the fly. The only downside with the controls, deals with moving around the map. Moving with the d-pad or circle pad tends to move the screen a bit to quickly. This can get slightly annoying when you just want to move a little bit.

One of the unfortunate choices for the game is the music quality. The background music is somewhat annoying to listen to. Sadly this just gets on your nerves after a while. It honestly sounds like it’s very compressed do to how static-like it sounds. This sadly must be one of drawbacks of being a DSiWare game, as the iOS version sounds wonderful.

Even with annoying sound quality, I am still going to recommend this game. Amoebattle is a fun real time strategy game that you should definitely check out. The game has a good length to it for its price with some great gameplay to it. If you enjoy strategy games, this game is for you.

Rating: 8/10