At Eurogamer 2012, we had the pleasure of meeting Chris Carver, the Marketing Director of Kukouri Mobile Entertainment for an exclusive interview about their new title, Tiny Troopers.
Developed by Kukouri Mobile Entertainment, and published by Iceberg Interactive, Tiny Troopers is a fully 3D squad-based action-shooter. It is produced in a comical cartoon style, and looks very vibrant and colourful on all versions. It is sure to embrace a wide market with its appeal, with addictive and fun gameplay, whilst offering a challenge.
“Basically, if you know what Cannon Fodder is, you know what this game is”.
You are thrown into a generals position, set to lead tiny soldiers on a modern battlefield, fighting an un-named war. Missions will involve you destroying enemy armored formations (or die trying), saving hostages from attack, and eliminating enemy generals amongst other tasks, guaranteed to keep you busy for a while.
Enemy targets you will encounter include infantry, snipers (don’t you just hate these guys), technical’s, and tanks! An endless supply of fresh soldiers are ready for battle to fill the ranks should you lose a few (or many). However with those troopers lucky enough to survive from one mission to the next, they will receive a new stripe, and with each new stripe, they become tougher to beat.
Command points on offer give you an advantage, enabling better equipment, reinforcing your already strong team (I’m sure) with a machine gunner, medic or even a delta force member which can call in support drops to help protect the troops during battle.
Tiny Troopers is already available on MAC and PC and IOS platforms, with an Android version slated for release probably in the next 2 weeks, or at the latest, the end of the month. For PC and MAC, Tiny Troopers is available on any major online digital distributor including the Steam platform.
The game originally started out purely as a mobile venture, but the games scope got larger, and with it, the news that it would be releasing on desktop platforms too. This is good news, as the PC/MAC offers something the mobile platform simply cannot, and that is a mouse.
While the touch based gameplay offers reliable and fast targeting, and tap to shoot controls, nothing can beat the accuracy of a mouse, and button bashing for repetitive and fast shooting, but for playing on the move, the IOS/(Android) versions (will) offer an amazing experience.
Of course, with the mobile and PC/MAC platforms being different considering the way you play, Tiny Troopers had to be adapted, and any good developer knows this. When asked what would be different between the versions, it all came down to the balancing of the game – how hard it would be for example to have as many waves of enemies on the mobile versions, as the PC/MAC versions because of the different control interface.
“Slightly different because of the balancing. You use a mouse to control things here (PC/MAC), so you fire faster – you hold down the mouse, you keep on firing, where on the Android and IOS, it’s tap to shoot and will burst fire. So there’s less enemies typically on the mobile and more enemies on the PC”
Tiny Troopers is pretty vast, especially for a mobile title, offering 30 missions which equates to around 14 hours of gameplay, and that is certainly worth the price of admission, especially on mobile platforms where you get a lot of content for your money!
If you have an IOS device, I would certainly give this game a go, and if you have an Android device and have been wanting to play this, then your wait is almost over.
To show the developers enthusiasm for the game, a game mode was released that wasn’t even planned, which is sure to keep you coming back.
“We have a Zombie Survival mode but that wasn’t even planned either. It was going to be an entirely different game by itself, and then we put it as a free update”
Lets hope that the Android version also has this feature upon release; possibly even built into the release as opposed to a download.
For more information on Tiny Troopers, make sure to head over to http://www.kukouri.com for more about the game, and others Kukouri Mobile Entertainment have developed.
What do you think of Tiny Troopers? Have you purchased the game? Planning to? Sound off down on the comments below.
