Steam Early Access Preview: Boid

•  Boid is currently a Steam Early Access title at the time of writing this preview, so consider this article as a first impression.

Boid is an indie multiplayer strategy game that focuses on quick thinking and flash tactics, leaving matches to be just a few minutes long. Once I heard about it I was curious to give it a go, I absolutely adore strategy and pretty much every form of it. I grew up playing Command & Conquer, StarCraft, Warcraft, Total Annihilation, Civilization, Alpha Centurai and loads more that I could add to the list, and I still play lots of my modern favourites such as Company of Heroes. Lots of – no, pretty much all of – those titles are ones that have matches that tend to last at least 30 minutes, unlike Civilization in which the matches could last days, and I believe my longest was 2 weeks roughly. So I wanted to give Boid a go and see how well it can do fast-paced tactics, and what I found, left me feeling impressed.

I began with the tutorial (a fair few Early Access don’t add a tutorial until its full release) so that I could learn the basics. As far as tutorials go, it’s nicely done, there’s no barrage of information in text boxes, no learning videos that don’t let you interact or play the game, no narrator droning on about things irrelevant to the game’s mechanics. Instead, you get a few words explaining what the bases are, how to move and select your units, how to convert your units, and then it leaves you to your own devices and challenges you to win the match from what you learnt over the course of the past couple of minutes. There is a Wikipedia-esque part to the tutorial which gives more detail about all the units, bases, and turrets too, so you can have a good idea of what unit type beats what.

 

I then moved into playing a match versus A.I. In this skirmish mode I have the option of 6 different maps and 3 difficulties, easy, normal, and hard. For the sake of simplicity I went with normal and I chose the map ‘Crossroads’. You get an overview of the map as it’s loading to get a good idea of where the bases are and what the layout is like. After a few seconds of that, the game zooms into your ‘base’ (I say it like that because a base in Boid is never permanent, it always shifts around). Your units will spawn one by one within the ‘spawner’ bases, and can move out to capture other bases pretty much instantly as there’s no requirement as to how many units you need to capture a base, thankfully. In other RTS games which are of a larger scale and thus take longer, capturing munitions or power bases can take up to a minute sometimes, and even longer for control points, which furthers the idea that Boid is definitely a fast-paced game.

It didn’t even take a minute for me to discover the enemy; in fact they tried assaulting me not 30 seconds into the match. Their mistake was not going for the two unit converters on their part of the map (they’re the red on the image below, I’m green). That allowed me to kill the units that hit me near instantly, as there weren’t very many and I began with an endless stream of basic units followed by the heavier ‘crab’ units, and after a total time of around 5 minutes I had won. The length of the matches is surprising, they don’t last very long at all and one slight mistake could cost you the game with not much time to redeem yourself. Even games where the tactic is to ‘rush’ your enemy (such as the infamous ‘Zerg Rushes’ from StarCraft) last a bit longer than 5 minutes on the occasion.

My experience in a multiplayer game was similar. I had a lovely conversation with the person who I was put with during matchmaking before the online game; we have both thoroughly enjoyed our experience so far. The map allowed for 2 flanking routes, which we both constantly tried taking advantage of in order to dislodge the other’s defences. To cut a long story short, I managed to do that once the other player attempted a direct assault through the middle, and the match lasted around 7 minutes. The map itself, named Triple Threat, is nicely balanced and thought out, with a good mix of neutral A.I and threats from the enemy player. I played through a couple of matches with this other player, and both times I had won, although there was no clear winner until the very end, when I had his only spawner base cornered.

Matchmaking in Boid is good; I was waiting in the queue for about a minute before I was matched with somebody. There’s no lobby system, instead you just click ‘Quick Game’ or set up some custom parameters for a map you’d like and then wait, or you can invite a friend to play against. The menu tells you how many players are online in the game right now, as well as how many are also waiting in the queue, so you have a good idea of how many people you can be potentially matched against. When playing the multiplayer itself, I came across no issues, no latency or delays in the chat, the game ran flawlessly.

To sum the game up so far in its Early Access state, I can positively say that from what I’ve played so far it feels very finished and very polished. There’s room for improvement, as always, but honestly it’s probably the best Early Access game I’ve played in terms of its stability and amongst the best for just how fun it is. Some units certainly need balancing, some are incredibly fast and powerful for what they are, whereas others are slow and don’t hit as hard as you’d expect, (but this is why it’s in Early Access). The game could benefit from team matches, as currently it’s only 1v1. Certain game modes could be beneficial to the game’s entertainment value too, such as a sector control game mode or conquest. Even little things like the ability to perhaps customise your team colours could be fun. The game is getting a full singleplayer campaign at which point Boid will be leaving its Early Access state and into a fully released state, and I’m certainly looking forward to that. It’ll also be getting a replay viewer, so you can watch your best matches back, or see where you can improve, as well as a map editor and Steam workshop support.

Is Boid worth picking up right now, despite it being in Steam Early Access? I’d say yes. The Early Access program has got its fair amount of flaws and games that feel like a scam, but Boid is certainly not one of them. If you love RTS and you’re after a quick game, or even if you don’t feel familiar with the genre at all and would like to get into it, then I’d strongly recommending that you give it a go. It’s not very expensive, and the price will most likely go up as it gets closer to its full release. For those of you, who are wary of Early Access, then make sure to keep an eye out on here on Push-Start for a full review once the game releases. You can buy or read about the game on Steam, or you can visit its official website. Right now it’s only in Windows, but the developers are working on having it working on Mac and Linux shortly.