Hydra Battles Official Cover

Hydra Battles

🏒 Michalis Kamburelis πŸ“… 06 Mar 2015

🎬 Deep Vision & Technical Analysis

πŸŒ† Atmosphere & Visual Direction

Authentic vintage visual direction representing landmark era aesthetic standards.

⚑ Action Pacing & Physics Engine

Systemic interaction and engaging pacing designed for historical immersion.

🎯 Performance & Launch Trajectory

An essential milestone preserved in masterclass gaming archival standard.

Game Overview & History

RTS (real-time strategy) game for 2 players, with some twists. Players gather resources and attack the other player, also drawing lines to hinder the other player movement.

Playing Both players play on the same screen (no scrolling). Each player has 10 seconds for move (it is also possible to configure the game in “simultaneous” playing mode).

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Hydra Battles - In-Game Capture
πŸ“Έ Hydra Battles - In-Game Capture

The game can be played on PC (each player then takes the mouse for 10 seconds), or Android (two players drag on a single touch screen; multi-touch works, so drag as you like).

Buildings Build buildings by dragging them from the sidebar.

Release & Industry Impact

Hydra Battles - In-Game Capture
πŸ“Έ Hydra Battles - In-Game Capture

Headquarters (HQ). Cost 1000 wood. Can train a peasant, for 2 wood. You have to build HQ before placing other buildings on the map.Barracks. Cost 10 wood. Can train a warrior, for 6 wood. At the beginning, you do not have any buildings or units. Your only move is to build a Headquarters (drag the “Build HQ” icon), and then train a peasant (click on HQ). Then you can instruct the peasant to gather wood, and eventually you will be able to train more peasants or build barracts (that in turn will allow to train soldiers).

Units Train units by clicking on a building (HQ train peasants, barracks train warriors).

Peasants. Send them to the forest, to cut down trees, to gather wood. Cutting down a tree increases your resources. The “hemp” trees are higher quality wood (you gain 2 wood for a tree), other trees are lower quality (you gain 1 wood for a tree).Warriors (knights for human, minotaurs for monsters). Send them to attack other buildings or units. Kill warriors or peasants of other player. The ultimate game goal is to destroy your enemy: kill all his units and destroy his buildings.

Commands When you command a unit (a peasant or a soldier) to go somewhere, you draw a line on the screen. This line cannot be crossed by other commands. This way you may make it difficult for other player (and yourself) to make other commands (to gather resources or attack you).

By drawing correct, long lines, you not only direct your units, but also make it more difficult for other player to win. Line drawing works very nice with a mouse or a multi-touch touch screen (like on Android).

See sources on https://github.com/castle-engine/hydra-battles