Game Play

City Siege is a war game in which a small army sets out to gain control of the island filled with different factions. It is a 2D, physics-based, PC game in which a dependable army is slowly built by playing through the levels and earning points for your wins. Each level is unique and has some combinations of challenges for the player to overcome. Some levels are a race against time to defeat the enemy while other are simply a matter of overcoming the enemy. Another interesting twist that was put in the game is hostages. On several levels, there are hostages that need to be rescued so all out bombing and shooting is not an option.

Analysis

As previously mentioned, the game is set on an island with different factions. The main antagonist is dark-skinned natives while the player, the protagonist, is defending their oil wells and pipelines on the island. There is a third group, the poachers who the player is also against. This setting seems very imperialistic in its outlook. This setting is almost a modern day reminder of what happened with the Americas in the 17^th and 18^th century and is not very tasteful.

When first playing City Siege there are very few choices to make. The player is given one infantry in which to attack the enemy in the first level. Upon a successful completion of the first level, enough points will have been gained in order to recruit one more of several low-end military personnel such as a spy or sentry. Also, more areas of the map will begin to open as more points are accrued. In this way, the player is slowly lead into more choices. They can now choose which personnel they want to include in a particular battle based on their particular strategy for completing the level.  The player can also choose to go back to a previous level in order to gain a better time or to earn more points.  The gradually increasing amount of decisions allows the new player to orient themselves by only bringing a few new elements at a time. The more advanced in the game a player is the more tools and knowledge they have in order to strategize about the best methods of attacking the enemies.

Much of City Siege is based on the skill of the player. The player’s control of the different weaponry and personnel is the biggest factor of whether a player will win or lose a particular level.  Even seemingly random occurrences such as when the enemy detects your presence eventually becomes almost intuitive to the player. In Lazzaro’s four keys of fun, this game plays most directly into the “hard fun” category.  Players are required to invest time and energy in learning the best strategies and weapons in order to completely defeat the enemy.

City Siege also has a positive feedback loop of sorts. Whenever a level is accomplished more currency is given. As long as the toll of the battle was close to the currency gain the game continues on a slow progressive track. If a level is finished exceptionally efficiently there will be much more reward. The reward can then be directly translated into weapons that will increase the efficiency of the next battle. This is somewhat checked by an increasing difficulty of the levels as the player progresses.

Overall, City Siege is what one might expect from a physics based 2-D scroller. The game is quickly and easily learned and the player’s skills are being continually sharpened.  Grinding in this game is minimal because it is fairly easy to get to higher levels and the player can constantly be trying out new weapons and personnel. This leads toward and interesting and almost addictive game initially.  Once all the levels are unlocked the game quickly becomes less interesting.