Total Domination re-review

Total Domination (formerly Total Domination: Nuclear Strategy) is a Facebook game from Plarium. The game has been available since 2011 — we last took a look at it here — but it showed up as one of the week’s fastest-growing games by MAU this week. It’s not immediately obvious exactly why this is, but it’s likely something to do with cross-promotion from Plarium’s newer title Stormfall: Age of War – which, as it happens, is largely a medieval fantasy reskinning of Total Domination.

Total Domination casts players in the role of the commander of an isolated sector in the wasteland. The context of the player’s appointment is not made particularly clear, but the overarching story isn’t really an important aspect of Total Domination. Instead, almost immediately after starting, the game’s “tutorial” character General Winters begins bellowing at the player through some rather poor-quality voice acting and urging them through their initial quests, which help to get their base up and running.

Total Domination is a massively-multiplayer strategy game of a similar ilk to those made by developers such as Kabam and Digital Chocolate. Players split their time between managing their base’s construction and setting out into the persistent world to attack other players and computer-controlled installations in an attempt to power themselves up and assert their dominance as much as possible in the game world. There is not really a “goal” as such — the aim is simply to be as successful a commander as possible.

When looking at the base interface, the player has a number of options. They can construct and upgrade buildings, each of which performs a specific function such as harvesting resources or producing military units, they can engage in trading with other players, and they can perform research. Trading allows players to make offers of one type of resource in exchange for another or accept offers from other nearby players. Research, meanwhile, allows the player to improve the capabilities of their units and the options they have available for their overall military strategy. Most tasks in the base take varying periods of real time to perform, though these delays may, as ever, be bypassed through the use of the games hard currency crystals.

When looking at the overall world map, the player may examine nearby commanders’ bases by clicking on them, and interact with them in various ways — requesting to be allies, sending reinforcements or resources or simply invading. Players are prevented from attacking one another until they reach level 10, and at that point only players between levels 10 and 15 can attack one another — a good way of minimizing “griefing” by higher-level players

Social features in the game include a real-time chat facility — though as is often the case with Facebook games it is impossible to use this in full-screen mode, presumably due to technical limitations of Flash — and the facility to become allies with other players in order to trade resources and reinforcements. It’s also possible to form clans for more large-scale alliances and compete against other groups of players. The game makes use of Facebook’s new “quick start” facility, whereby the player may begin playing without having to give permissions or allow access to their information — should the player make a certain amount of progress in the game, however, a quest will prompt them to go through the usual permissions dialog to “unlock” the game’s full functionality.

The game monetizes primarily through sales of its hard currency crystals, which are also awarded in rather generous quantities for completing quests and achievements. These may be expended on a variety of things, including speeding up time-consuming tasks and purchasing premium items that provide an advantage in combat against either the AI or other players. There is no real “throttling” system in play, timers aside, so players can enjoy the game for as long as they like in a single sitting.

Total Domination is a competent game that is well-presented, atrocious voice acting aside. The trouble with it, though, is that it feels much too directed. The thing that attracts core players to standalone strategy games on computer and console is the freedom they have to determine how to approach a given situation and come out on top; here, the endless string of quests constantly nudges the player in the direction of the “best” approach, and leaves the game feeling more like following a checklist than actually developing one’s own personal strategy. The player is, of course, free to ignore the quests at any time, but large, obtrusive arrows indicating new objectives show that Plarium clearly intend the player to work through their quests rather than play in a freeform manner. This approach is fine for players new to the strategy genre, but those raised on a diet of standalone PC strategy games may find the approach stifling.

This issue aside, Total Domination is, like Stormfall, one of the better examples of social strategy games out there. Its sci-fi art style will appeal to more mature players who typically shy away from the more cartoony offerings in the genre, and the game certainly has plenty of things for players to do — it’s just a bit too enthusiastic about nudging players in the direction of all of them rather than letting them discover things for themselves.

Total Domination currently occupies the 1,000,000+ MAU tier with a rank of 329, and the 100,000+ DAU tier with a rank of 294. Follow its progress with AppData, our tracking service for mobile and social games and developers.

One of the better social strategy games out there, but far too directed an experience to be truly enjoyable for experienced strategy gamers.

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War Commander re-review

War Commander from Kixeye has been around on Facebook for some time now — we last took a look at it last October — but it has enjoyed sustained growth ever since then, and features regularly in Facebook’s sidebar advertising module with a provocative “Must be 18+ to play” slogan.

At its core, War Commander is a very similar game to Kixeye’s other high-profile “hardcore” strategy title Battle Pirates, which we reviewed recently. Players build up a base, train troops, upgrade buildings and eventually set out into the massively-multiplayer world to assert their dominance through military might. Like most other similar games of this type, the player is given a week-long “newbie shield” to protect them from bullies as they acclimatize to the game and build up their defenses.

Gameplay unfolds over two main components. The base-building section is a combination of managing the available space and ensuring enough resources are on hand for various construction projects — though as usual, it’s also possible to directly purchase resources using hard currency if the player finds themself a little bit short for the task they want to complete. A series of quests that appear in the corner of the screen guide the player through a suggested series of tasks, though it’s possible to ignore these once the initial tutorial is over. It’s generally in the player’s interests to complete these tasks, however, as they offer significant resource and experience rewards in most cases, allowing for more rapid progress to be made.

When the player has constructed military units using the appropriate buildings, they may then deploy them onto the hex-based world map and move them around to capture resource nodes, attack AI-controlled enemy bases or other players, or simply explore and scout to see what is in the local area. If attacking a base, the perspective switches to a close-up isometric view of the base which the player is attacking, and it then becomes possible to give direct orders to units or, optionally, to let the game’s AI prioritize targets. The latter option is usually just about acceptable in most situations, but it doesn’t make particularly sound strategic decisions. This becomes especially apparent in the game’s tutorial mission, where the player is encouraged to put a tank up front for their infantry to hide behind, only for the infantry to automatically charge straight past it in a kamikaze attack on the enemy base.

War Commander’s presentation is, like Battle Pirates, highly polished and thus attractive to “core” gamers. The distractingly testosterone-fuelled, male-dominated aesthetic is still present and correct, however, with a number of elements of questionable taste throughout the game — downed enemies remain in a bloody heap on the battlefield until they are picked clean by crows, for example, and the game’s AI character RUBI is represented as a large-breasted robot woman who moans suggestively when “reprogrammed” during the introductory tutorial. While the subject matter is stereotypically likely to appeal to male players more than females, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to make the aesthetic a little less aggressively gendered.

Social features are limited to a real-time chat facility and asynchronous combat between players’ units and bases. The proposed “alliance” feature mentioned when we last looked at the game does not appear to have been implemented as yet — the game’s official forums do, however, offer the facility for players to set up unofficial alliances with one another, though this has no direct effect in game and is based on the players’ respective “honor” rather than game mechanics.

Flaws and elements of questionable taste aside, War Commander is a solid game that makes good use of the Facebook platform to provide a fun, compelling experience for fans of light military strategy. Its gameplay is straightforward enough for strategic newcomers to get into easily while simultaneously offering a considerable amount of depth for those willing to invest a bit more time, effort and money into the experience. Its presentation and level of polish is such that core gamers won’t immediately dismiss it in disgust, and the game isn’t too overly aggressive with its requests to share achievements or get the player to spend money, which will also ensure that core gamers give it a fair chance.

These decisions seem to be paying off, too — the game currently has an impressive 5,200,000 monthly active users and 660,000 daily active users. Follow its progress with AppData, our traffic tracking service for social games and developers.

Despite a few provocative elements of questionable taste, this is a solid strategy game friendly to both core and casual players alike.

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