An unblemished and, even more importantly, unclaimed world lies ready for conquest from the stars. Unfortunately this corner of the galaxy is rather cramped, and up to seven races are waiting in the wings, desperate for new worlds for their growing empires. In fact, if worlds weren't so scarce they'd almost be willing to destroy the planet, just to keep it from the hands of the other races. In short, they have reached... Deadlock: Planetary Conquest, Accolade's new game of multi-race (and multi-player) city building, land-exploring, alien-busting fun.
As the game starts the varied races have come to an agreementûinstead of destroying the precious planet to prevent its use, each race will be allowed to send down small colonizing forces of equal strength, some raw materials, and the knowledge in their heads. Behind the colonists a blockade will be formed so that all they have is what they can develop on-planet. The first race to successfully build five major cities (or to wipe out the other races) will be declared the owner of the planet.
While players can choose a quick start option to get right into the game, optional settings are accessible that will let them tailor the game to their needs. A variety of planet sizes, victory conditions, and types will be available.
Each sector of the island, continent, hemisphere, or planet being fought over can provide a potential city-site. Races send out colonizer units (if a site is unoccupied) or military units (if it isn't) in an attempt to secure their hold on a particular area. Each site has different terrain and may be better suited for cities with different fociûfarming/lumber, mining, manufacturing, etc. Players will choose which buildings to construct at each site (each of which can take up a different amount of space): farms, factories, tech labs, defense canons, and even more exotic structures as technological capabilities grow.
From the settlement/city site players can access individual buildings. Each building type will have a different focus and therefore different settings. For example, upon establishing a colony players will want to access the city center building to move workforce into production. As the empire grows statistical displays will allow players to keep track of its status. The pre-alpha version we played displays information on enemies as well, but much of this detail will probably disappear (or be harder to get) as the final game will let you produce spy and satellite units. Important news reports will keep players up-to-date on the events that have occurred each turn.
Technological development is extremely important as aside from smuggling the only way to get advanced technologies is to work on designing them. Because players have come from advanced civilizations, they already know about the existence of the technologies; however, because of the rules of the deadlock each race has to build the capabilities from scratch. The technopedia provided with the game gives players an idea of what technologies they need in order to follow a certain branchûif a race or city site is weak on food production, for example, that player can work on the technologies leading to advanced food production structures like the hydroponics farm.
Multiplayer play will be an important part of the game. Gamers will be able to send messages (either generic challenges or specific notes) to both human- and computer-controlled opponents. The computer opponents won't take abuse silentlyûthey'll respond to players with rendered, lip-synched video taunts. In fact, the computer players will even initiate communications under appropriate circumstances Despite the deadly competition for the planet, business must go on! Gamers will be able to trade with their opponents, but should keep in mind that "business is war" tooûget what's needed while keeping it from the enemy!
Skirting around the fringes of the known races are the Skirineen. As the game says, "the Skirineen will sell you anything... for the right price!" The Skirineen are willing to sneak material, technology, and troops through the blockade for enormous sumsûafter all, it's no scales off their backs because the gamer will be the one in big trouble if they're caught.
Gameplay in Deadlock is fast and easy, yet looks to be detailed enough to hold the interest of the more demanding strategy gamers. Turns pass fairly quickly, and it is fairly easy to establish at least an initial toehold on the planet. The game uses very nice looking (even in the pre-alpha version) SVGA map screens to display the world, city, or building being examined. While much of the game is conducted in the now-familiar isometric perspective, gamers have the option of turning on a standard (but still good looking) overhead view. The prototype interface was fairly intuitive and required few clicks to get to all the elements--always important in a game where the pace of play is surprisingly speedy.
