Writings of Mass Deduction

RicolaVG has an interesting history as an indie games developer. They have, to be frank, released several pretty bad games. And yet sometimes they hit it out of the park, like with “Hopper” and “StarWings: Mission Command”. So which is “Indiemon: Earth Nation”? The latter, I’m happy to say, and they did so by cleverly borrowing an innovation that Halo popularised.

Let me step back one step. “Indiemon: Earth Nation” is a Pokemon-inspired game. No problem there, Digimon and many others have done the same. “Indiemon: Earth Nation” borrows elements from Pokemon and Digimon, and I would guess elsewhere.

But what did I mean with that Halo reference earlier? Prior to Halo, it was common practice for a shooter to let you carry any number of weapons, as if you were some kind of walking ammo dump. Whether it was Doom, or Quake, or Unreal, you could carry every gun you picked up like some kind of homicidal gun collector. Halo was different, you could carry two types of guns. That’s it. Find a gun you wanted to take into the next area, you had to dump one of the ones you had. No exceptions. Conventional wisdom might have dictated that would suck for the player, but it was brilliant because suddenly you had to make these new tactical choices as you played and it was a refreshing change. It added a layer of strategy that was previously missing.

In Pokemon, and its many imitators, you are trying to “collect them all”. Not with “Indiemon: Earth Nation”, though. Here, you can take only four with you at any one time. Unlock a new one that you want to keep? You’ll have to decide which one to get rid of. You are again faced with difficult choices, and it again freshens up the gameplay and helps each play through be very different. Kudos to the developer for finding something that we didn’t know we wanted to live without.

So like Pokemon, this is a light-RPG where you train a group of (in this case) indiemons, developing their “growth”, and battling others and their indiemon collections. Presentation is nice, and the price is right at a dollar (since the game is short-ish). Well worth a look for fans of the genre, especially those open to something a little different

Here’s what the developer (RicolaVG) has to say about the game:

“Play as Landon, an Indiemon Tamer, who travels across the Earth Nation protecting it from intruders. Capture and train Indiemon to help you on you journey. All new Earth Island Expansion added for extra gameplay.”