The Continuum

TechCrunch infrequently discusses the gaming industry. Usually it's trying to influence the success or failure of Silicon Valley, dot-com startups, or announcing their fall to the deadpool. So, when it did highlight an actual game, The Continuum, it caught my interest.

Quote from the website: "The Continuum is an online collectible wargame. It combines classic turn-based wargaming, collectibility and RPG character development into one multi-player adventure that will change the way you game. Characters, abilities, and equipment combine with in-game artifacts, epic battlefields, and changing scenarios to provide an experience that is at once familiar and at the same time all new."

So, what in the blue blazes does that mean? At a high level, The Continuum is a PVP, 1 vs. 1, board game, where you build an army of troops in the style of a trading card game, but without the elipilptic seizure inducing, WTF?!? kidgasm cartoon tie-in. Think Risk meets Pokemon meets D&D. I have no doubt this is a common table top, trading card game motif, but I've personally never played any, so I can't really compare it to any.

I tried to read the rules of Pokemon once, but quickly got bored. It's just too convoluted and without a computer to enforce the rules, it would require too much teeth-pulling, tedious maintenance. Fizzbin anyone?. Same reason I hate D&D. That crap went out of fashion about the time the bank runs out of money in monopoly.

Anyway, back to The Continuum. The Continuum is a browser-based flash game. This means any computer can run it. It also means that there won't be any ground breaking OMG graphics. But that's OK, if you can get past it, because this game is chest deep in stats. That's really the heart and soul of this title, the building and tweaking of your army, and the website that tracks your profile and statistics is just as much a part of the game and the game itself.

Seven Lights makes the game (great company logo, btw). The monetization of the property is buying booster packs of troops and upgrades for them, with the randomness akin to buying wax packs of baseball cards. The trading card game heritage clearly shows here. It also means that you could possibly drop some serious jack to get that one last character to complete your set. For all the OCD completists out there, be warned! After three games, they gave me a code to enter in the marketplace which gave me four free characters and some ingame currency to buy upgrades or other characters. Just like a random wax pack, two were ones I already had.

Visiting their website, the first thing you'll do is create an account. It's a pretty straight forward process, with email verification. Upon creating an account, they give you a free starter pack of troops. They're like drug pushers: you know, they always hook you in with the freebies. You'll also want to create your public profile, declare a land, enter a tagline, boast about your womanizing, etc. You'll also want to review the 100 page user manual and half a dozen or so video tutorials. The Legend section of the website is actually kind of sweet, they got's themselves a backstory, complete with downloadable comics. They actually made the effort to develop a backstory. Bonus points.

The website is very much reminiscent of a corporate intranet site. It's very data driven and contains lots of focused content. It's apparent the developers have experience in client/server web-app development. But, this isn't your daddy's intranet site, as it's style is in line with gaming. Did I mention they have comics?

To start a match, you launch into the game's lobby. The lobby seems to be standard conventions, similar to GameSpy's and others like that. There you scroll through the list of players and challenge one. If that person accepts, you launch into a game room. The lobby had between 30 and 150 people on it every time I've seen it. So, it's not reaching critical mass yet. That may be an Achillies heel if they can't get enough people to play against.

One of my bigger complaints is the lack of single player or tutorial mode to ramp up on. I suspect this will be added later on. But for now, this meant I created a second account, opened two browsers on my mac mini and played against myself. I just didn't feel like I would be able to learn to play the game against a seasoned player. I'd get pwned before I knew what was going on. Seven Lights thought of this, and caps the number of matches you can play against a single opponent that counts toward your XP and loot collection. So, minimal twinking.

Opening a game room with only you and your opponent, you get to the game options screens. There you determine the options of the game, once both players accept you select your army for that game. Initially, I had so much trouble getting past this screen. I kept trying to add a unit to the squad, but it wouldn't let me. I had to first create an army then create a squad. A little feedback on that tip would have gone a long way. This screen could take a lot of time anyways, as the unique conditions of the match may involve a fair amount of fuss over the troop deployment. After we both accept the conditions of the match, we launch the game.

The game starts with a movement phase, where you move across the map getting loot and powerups and positioning your self for combat. The terrain creates an obstacle for moving around the map, but doesn't seem to bear any relevance in combat. When you are next to your opponent in the game map, and move to your opponents square, combat phase begins.

When combat begins, you basically choose an attack type for three rounds and then a random roll determines the outcome. Many of the troops have special moves that you can try. You can also click on a troop to review the attack sequence of the previous round. However, there's a countdown, typically a minute, that you have until the next round begins, so be quick with the analysis. While the characters have unique attacks, they never show up in combat. Just random rolls with a slot machine like animation.

This is pretty much the gist of the match until the end game conditions are met. Afterwards, you're given a good summary screen of the match. Going back to your profile you can review your gaming history in the Crossworlds (the fictional realm of the game). This is where the richness of the game shines. Your profile is a total statgasm, where you can review your complete match history, keep track of your best troop performers and tweak their gear and specs.

It's odd to have such a rich game setup and a very simplistic game mode. Obviously, the heart of this game exists outside the matches. It's a rock/paper/scissors concept with about eight different types of orders, with randomness of rolls determining the outcome. Most of the strategic concerns exist outside the actual matches.

Ultimately, I really wanted to like this game. If I were to develop a game, this is exactly the approach I would take. It's such a great effort that I feel fills a niche and uses technologies that need to be used in this manner. But, at the end of the day, I just didn't have fun playing the game. I take this a personal fault; no really, it's not you, it's me. I'm probably not the best person to review this, as I don't enjoy this type of game, and I've never really played a game in this motif. But with 100 people playing the game, who else is gonna write this? I'm optimistic that the future will show promise (or some other sappy positive note ending).