Summer Offensive

"Summer Offensive" was an entry in the Seasons of RMN III event where developers had to make a game based around one of the seasons. And based on the name alone it's pretty obvious that OzzyTheOne, Delsin7, and Jaiden were going for a summer themed game. Though, I'm not sure if this game met the requirements since the seasonal theme really doesn't feel like it was fulfilled here. After all, it isn't enough to merely include summer in the title. And while the season is supposedly important since a major river your forces need to cross is at it's lowest at this time. This feels rather arbitrary since the only battle in the game showcases that there is at least one bridge over this river. A bridge that would be crossable regardless of season. After all, it's not like were having to ford the river in order to enter enemy territory here.

At any rate I was drawn towards taking a look at this game since it's a turn-based strategy game and I have a major soft spot for them. Though, I'll admit I was a bit disappointed by this one for a few reasons.

For starters the game only includes a single battle that basically serves as a tutorial stage since the enemy never attacks the player. As such it's easy for the player to set the pace of battle and thus always feel like they are in control. In a game like this the enemy needs to be more proactive so your at least losing a few units and feel like the balance in power is swinging back and forth a little bit. To make matters worse enemies tend to inflict rather minor amounts of damage even when exploiting your units weak spots. Though I suppose that just goes back to the point that this game basically only includes a tutorial stage that is near impossible to lose. And sometimes enemy units will waste attacks on units that utterly resist them for reasons that aren't particularly clear.



After all the tanks in this battle do have valid targets to use their machine gun attacks on. In fact, they have a whole bunch of viable targets. So there is little reason for them to waste bullets on a tank that will take minimal damage. Admittedly I did the same thing, but it was either use my machine gun or don't attack at all since I needed to wait a turn to use my cannon again.

The game also differs from other games in this genre since battles with enemies actually last multiple rounds and take place in a turn-based format where both sides take turns trying to annihilate each other. Albeit the attacking unit seems to go first so waiting for enemies to come to you is a definitely going to be a useful tactic for landing strikes that can heavily weaken enemy units to the point they are worthless on subsequent turns.

As for the graphics the game uses a combination of the RTP along with sprites rips from "Advance Wars" on the Gmae Boy Advance which I suppose is a good pick for this type of game. After all, this does take place in 1997 CE so you'd expect to see more modern military units. Though, I do kind of wish this game included some air units since the bulk of your forces in this battle are infantry units. And it would have been nice to get a feel for how they are going operate as well in this game.

Sound wise the game makes use of assets from a multitude of games such as "Growlanser 2" and "Grownlanser 4" which I actually own copies of but have never finished.



Though these are hardly the only games that are borrowed from since the credits openly admit that there are some sources that aren't even mentioned in the credits for the demo. Though, I'll also admit that I don't think the demo actually uses music from all of the mentioned games. So the team might have plans for certain tracks that may or may not come to fruition in the future.

As it stands, I'd say this demo really isn't worth looking at since it feels too much like a tutorial to be really enjoyable. After all, who wants to partake in a battle where you already know the outcome from the onset of the engagement. This opening battle just needed a lot more potential room for back and forth with units actively trying to engage the player instead of sitting and waiting for the player to make the first move. After all, this game only favors holding your positions until you have the ability to slam into your opponents first. At least that's how I see it at the moment. Maybe future updates if they occur will change my opinion, but I don't even know if this game is ever going to be actively worked on again since the developer admitted they were shifting their focus to another project back in May of 2021. So this game might just be doomed to be on indefinite hiatus like some other projects I've looked at recently.