Intro

"Battlefleet Excalibur" is a strategy game that was developed by Sidewinder using RPG Maker 2003 as part of the Valentiny Day 2020 event where participants were tasked with making a game involving romance that featured only a single map in a week. A restriction that this game gets around by having everything take place within a user interface so there really isn't a map per se. A move that is both clever and means this game is really visually limited. So if your looking for something more visually stimulating I'd recommend "Train Trip". Albeit that project is really lacking on the gameplay front.

Story

You play as Princess Charlotte's whose been tasked with defending New Eden from extra dimensional aliens. After all, this is meant to be a science fiction game and everything sounds more sci-fi when you include extra dimensions of reality with hostile alien life in them. Though fending off the endless waves of enemies would be a lot easier if the princess wasn't suffering from terrible headaches and being distracted by an imperial scientist that was the last surviving refugee from a ship trying to escape from the aliens.

At any rate if you manage to keep things together you can seal away the aliens using technology left behind by a precursor race that died out millions of years ago. Though in order to get that far your going to need to go rogue and refuse to return home at your father's request. After all, that would mean leaving billions behind to die at the hands of extra dimensional aliens that also happen to have psychic abilities. And after you've managed to beat the aliens are two obvious lovers decide to run away together on a battleship to live their lives out in the void.

Though, I'd like to think they brought some others along since I imagine it takes thousands of people to run a massive space battleship. Though the game never really gives us a good indicator on how big the Battleship Excalibur is, but I'm guessing it's a lot smaller than the Executor from Star Wars

Gameplay

You'll be spending the bulk of your time in this game messing around in the UI where you can flip between a few menus.



If you pick the planet option you can spend funds to build factories, farms, mines, and research labs. You need factories in order to generate funds at a rate of 50 credits per a turn but in order to get a factory up and running upon being built you also need a farm to grow the food needed to support your works and a mine to provide the raw materials needed for the factory to manufacture completed goods.

The research labs on the other hand produce 25 science points every turn and these points can be spent on researching various topics.



These topics can range from learning more about the aliens and their technology to developing your own tech. Albeit there isn't that much weapon tech for the player to develop. In fact, there are only three units you can unlock through research in this game if you exclude the jammer since researching that wins you the game. Those units are the mechanized ground tank which is used to repel enemy forces that have been dropped off by enemy ships, the humble anti-air which can potentially take out bombers and dreadnoughts if they've made it past your space fleet, and the frigate a spaceship whose value is a bit up in the air in my opinion.

Though in order to build these various units you'll need to click on the forces menu.



Marines: These guys basically serve as meat shields in order to protect your tanks and anti-air cannons from being taken out. Though admittedly they really aren't that much cheaper than the mechanized tanks and anti-air cannons they are meant to protect, but you'll definitely want to buy a decent amount of these elite soldiers that cost 40 credits to train and equip.

Anti-Air: These cannons have the potential to stop a planetary bombardment from alien bombers and dreadnoughts, but if they'll succeed or not is based on you having as many or more anti-air units than the number rolled. And this value can vary from 1 to 100. So as long as you have 100 anti-air units you don't have to worry about bombers and dreadnoughts slipping past your fleet. And unlike Advance Wars these units that cost 80 credits are completely useless against enemy ground units.

Tank: The tank is your best ground units and has over three times the offensive punch and over three times the defensive value of your marines. And achieve this massive upsurge in power at very reasonable price since you can buy these bad boys for a mere 80 credits a piece.

Starfighter: The starfighter largely serves as an anti-bomber unit but they are also extremely fragile and will likely get destroyed if used in multiple battles in a row. And once you've picked a ship for an engagement your forced to use it until it's destroyed to my knowledge. So your probably going to lose a few of these units that cost 300 credits to enemy dreadnoughts.

Frigate: The main use of the frigate is to deal with enemy transports in my experience, but it wasn't until I had a crap ton of anti-air cannons that the enemy AI even decided to start deploying more than one transport per a battle. At any rate these guys cost 1,200 credits and are potentially not worth it in my opinion. This is because they are easily taken out by enemy dreadnoughts. So unless you manage to stop two or more transport ships with your frigate. It's really not going to pay for itself since you'll probably lose so many marines to an enemy ground attack that you'll be spending about the same amount of money regardless.

Battleship Excalibur: You arrive in the New Eden system with this ship and get to keep it. And since it's a one of a kind that you can't buy in the shop. I really can't tell you how valuable it is in the mind of Sidewinder. At any rate you can use this vessel to take down enemy dreadnoughts. And it regains 50 HP per turn. So don't be afraid to throw it at the enemy if you need to since this unit can never truly be destroyed.

And if you select the codex you'll be allowed to read short encyclopedia entries about various topics.



And the end turn buttons ends your turn and allows the AI to decide if its going to send an enemy fleet or not.

Outside of flipping through menus to buy things. You also get to engage in space battles where you can pick a unit and then choose to fire, advance, or strategically retreat from an engagement. Though your only ever going to be allowed to fall back so far before your stopped. This is because both units most have a bare minimum accuracy level of 25% which is increased by 25% every time you advance towards the enemy. And it's that inability to switch or pull out a unit completely at the cost of letting a ship through that really sucks in my opinion. This is because it means you'll sometimes be forced to waste a starfighter or frigate in order to get the right ship into the space battle.

Graphics

Graphically the game uses a bunch of assets from other games and shows since the developer didn't have enough time to create entirely original assets for this project. Admittedly that really isn't that big of a surprise considering they had to throw this together in a week. So if your a fan of science fiction strategy games you'll probably notice a few familiar assets.

Sound

The game plays audio tracks pulled from a few places during ground combat, but the lines used during these engagements doesn't always make sense. Especially since a few of them are clearly lifted from space battles with people going on about the ship's hull being breached. In fact, I tend to find the random lines that play in the background rather annoying because of this.

As for the background music it's mostly pulled from games in the Ace Combat series. A series I really haven't spent any time on but the music is definitely solid.

Conclusion

"Battlefleet Excalibur" is a pretty basic strategy game that's all about building a massive economy while supporting it with as few units as possible. And those that master this trick can reach absolutely absurd levels of factories, farms, and mines by the end of the game.



In fact, you barely even need a space fleet in this game since the enemy will usually only attack with five ships at most. At least that's the maximum number of ships I've seen during space battles. And once you've got absurd amounts of credits rolling in you can basically snowball to the point you'll be impossible for the AI to break. So beating this game is rather easy in my opinion if you realize just how important getting your economy up and running is. So I can't imagine this being something I'd play more than a few times before moving on since the appeal of amassing vast amounts of credits will eventually wear thin. That being said this is worth a play if your a fan of strategy games even if this one is rather bare bones.