Dakka dakka.
Welcome
once again to PCGamesN’s Spotlight on Greenlight, our regular Saturday
feature where we look at the best and the most interesting Greenlight
games that are hoping to make their way onto Steam. We’ve already looked
at dozens of other titles in weeks past, so do take a look at our back catalogue.
For
this week’s Spotlight I’ve chosen a game that I thought more people
would’ve heard of, the sort of game that I’d hope would have reached
further than it already has and yet it still remains almost unknown.
That game is The Few and I think it shows a lot of potential. Strap in and fix your goggles, this is going to be an exciting Spotlight.
The
Few is a strategy game based around the Battle of Britain, sliding you
into the corduroy trousers of the Air Marshal responsible for the
defence of the British isles, popping a pipe into your mouth for good
measure. It’s the summer of 1940 and daily assault’s by Göring’s
Luftwaffe are about to begin, with wave after wave of bombers set to lay
waste to the nation’s industry and airfields.
The
only thing that stands in the way is The Few, a multinational
hodgepodge of exhausted, overworked pilots that the Royal Air Force has
assembled. Already stretched to their limits, it’s your job to train,
deploy and manage these pilots as hundreds of Heinkels make their way
toward the British coast. You’ll do this by jumping between production
management, where you’ll control the nation’s war effort, and a tactical
overview, which sees you assigning squadrons to cover different parts
of the country. A judicial deployment of your forces should hopefully
see you intercepting most of the raids sent against you.
Your
overview of a behexed Great Britain runs in pausable real-time and when
enemy forces aren’t on their way, you’ll can busy yourself with pilot
training and recruitment, putting bums on cockpit seats and making sure
every pilot has a Hurricane or Spitfire to fly in. Once a Nazi squadron
is spotted, you’ll want to send one of your own to shoot it out of the
skies and as the two flights meet, the game switches to a tactical
overview.
From
here you’ll maneuver your planes as they weave their way into battle,
directing them as they fly, switching their formations and directing
them against their targets.
If
you can keep your factories intact then they’ll keep providing you with
replacement aircraft and can also develop other equipment that will aid
in the defence of ol’ Blighty, such as anti-aircraft guns and radar
towers.
The Few is the work of Polish developers BlackMoon Design
and, as with quite a few other titles that are clamouring for our votes
on Steam Greenlight, it doesn’t look like it started life as a PC game.
Everything about The Few’s design suggests it was first conceived as
something for mobile or iOS devices and that would put it in line with
the rest of BlackMoon’s portfolio. Still, I see no reason to be snobby
about platforms, as it looks like a lot of fun to me and while it might
be a relatively lightweight strategy title, I see no reason why it
couldn’t entertain PC gamers just as much as anyone else. Triple Town has settled very comfortably onto Steam and I can vouch for just how horrifically addictive that can be.
If you want to keep up to date with the development of The Few, the game doesn’t yet have an official website but it does have a Facebook page here and, in case you missed the link the first time around, this is its home on Greenlight.
Tally ho.
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Eh, not for me. It takes a special kind of strategy - with some flair, preferably - to get me to care about things. XCOM, Valkyria Chronicles, RAD Soldiers - I'll play these easy. But something like, "The Few" here? Not so much.
I missed it when "Spotlight on Greenlight" looked at five games. Why the change in format? Occasionally "checking in" on games you covered before is cool, but now it's just officially one game? That's lame. There are so many interesting looking games on Greenlight that deserve some coverage! The last time you did it "right" was 1/19/13 - excuse me, "19/1/13" because you UK guys(?) do the month/day thing the other way.
And to be clear, when I said "Occasionally 'checking in' on games you covered before", I was referring to this edition. "Spotlight on Greenlight: Where are they now?". Link: http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/spotlight-greenlight-where-are-they-now
Hey Vin,
We changed the format as a bit of an experiment for a couple of reasons.
First: I thought it would be a bit better to try and focus on one game because we could probably show a bit more detail and, as we grow a bit, try and get some quotes and insight from the devs featured.
Second: we're struggling a bit to cover five games a week - we're starting to tap out the service. Five games is just too much.
However - you've pointed out the problem: with one game, there's only one chance that we'll point out something interesting.
Maybe the right approach is to mix a couple of previews of new games with a look back at what we've already covered.
Thanks for the thoughts though - really appreciated.