“…In An Octopus’ Garden in the Shade” Review

“…In An Octopus’ Garden in the Shade”

As soon as I saw the box to Tone Rebellion, I could tell
that this was going to be a weird game. Made by the creators of
Ascendancy, The Tone Rebellion has the same look
and feel. The Tone Rebellion is set
on an island floating through space. The local citizens are
little, octopus-like creatures which float around and are called,
appropriately enough, floaters. The floaters live on and
cultivate a life giving substance called The Tone (think “The
Force”), which looks a lot like water. Then, one day, a creature
called The Leviathan, which looks more like a rose branch (or one of
the Graboids from Tremors) than a whale, taps into the
power of The Tone and becomes extremely powerful. The Leviathan
then goes on a rampage, eating many floaters and breaking the
island world into many pieces. As leader of one of the four
tribes of floaters, it is your mission to destroy the growths of
the Leviathan and acquire the mystical artifacts necessary to
destroy it once and for all.

The Tone Rebellion, like
all real-time strategy games, starts the player with a small base and a few
workers. From there, the player must acquire resources (tone), construct buildings
(out of tone), and build units to fight battles with. The Tone Rebellion
also includes an extra aspect from puzzle games. As your tribe expands, you
come across many different artifacts. Some of the artifacts are used in combination
with mystic sites to produce magical effects. Also unique to Tone is
the fact that the bad guy is defeated not by a great battle, but by collecting
ancient artifacts.

All gameplay
takes place on the various pieces of the shattered island. For
what was supposed to be one island, the various pieces certainly
look very different. Some look like gardens, some like
tidepools, and others like fumaroles. All buildings are
constructed on ‘tone nodes’ which only exist in the areas where
you have built a ‘tone spreader’. The art is quite well done and
supports the story well. The game’s music is excellent. In fact, it fits
so well with the feel of the game that often I didn’t even notice
that is was there. It is worth noting that The Tone
Rebellion includes an audio CD along with the data CD for
those who wish to hear more of its haunting, otherworldly sounds.

For a game that, artistically,
has so much going for it, it would be nice if Tone also had great gameplay
to accompany the art and music. Yes, it would have been nice… The Tone
Rebellion has 12 different units per side, for a total of 48 different floater
units. Unfortunately, because most of these units are just minor improvements
over earlier units, there are really only 5 different units per side. Each side
can also only build 9 types of structures, which can become a little dull after
a while. It is also a little annoying that of the 8 structures available, none
are defensive. No turrets, no artillery tower, nothing.

In what is a major design limitation, every island
fragment in Tone is played out as a linear world. There
is no real North/South, only East/West. This gives battles all
the complexity of a tug-of-war. Also, because your floaters can
only move where you have built a tone spreader, most battles are
constricted to one half the screen. Alleviating the fact that
the game worlds are one-dimensional, there are bridges between
island fragments which can be opened once you have found a bridge
key. While this does help the game world becomes more
interesting than one big linear world would be, it also makes it
difficult to keep track of all your structures on the different
worlds. This meant that I had to spend a fair amount of my time
jumping from screen to screen to access my different buildings.

The Tone Rebellion is definitely not destined to become a classic
of real-time strategy. Combat is just too infrequent to keep most gamers
interested. When there is a battle, it is usually a minor skirmish,
instead of the battle royale which makes this genre so much fun. The two
things which distinguish Tone from other real-time strategy games,
the islands and artifacts, work well as a science fiction plot, but are
tedious and make manuvering the game world a chore. Tone
compensates for this lack of play value with well done and well matched
art and music. Unfortunately, Tone cannot muster enough substance
to make it appealing to the average real-time strategy player, leaving it
with hard-core Sci-Fi fans as its only remaining audience.