Our bodies are composed of cells. Cells can mutate, attack other cells, or merge to become something completely different. Boid is a game about cells doing cell-stuff, but instead of being strictly explorative, it’s a class-based RTS. That’s right, your cells have to take over every other cell! Get ready, arm your cells and attack!
Boid has seven classes, Venom, Scout, Leech, Kamikaze, Crab, Gun, and Medic. Available classes depend on the map being played, for instance, a map may only have Crab (heavy) units. One plus about this design choice is players can’t use the same strategy on every map. Players are forced to understand all classes and be proficient with each.
In addition to classes, maps may also have special abilities. Special abilities include Teleport, Freeze, or Revert. Teleport will allow you to send a group of enemies right into an enemy’s base, freeze will let you stop enemies in their tracks, and revert will strip enemy units of any updated classes.
Boid was created to be a competitive RTS with a low-entry barrier. For any game to be truly competitive, the online experience must be smooth and as lag free as possible. tinyBuild let us know that players in different countries, or even across oceans can play Boid competitively against eachother with no major notice of lag. Having such a large pool of available players for competitively play will likely increase the playability of Boid. Instead of searching a player pool in your local region (ie. West Coast US, East Coast US, EU, etc.), Boid can match you against almost anyone in the world while maintaining a quality, competitive experience.
Oscar and I got the chance to play Boid against eachother at PAX East 2015. Oscar totally manhandled me two games in a row, but despite my despicable losses, Boid was still fun to play (plus I think I can get good enough to beat Oscar every time – don’t tell him that). There is a lot of clicking (a la Starcraft), but Boid doesn’t have strict rules, all it wants you to do is build, build, build, build, attack! There is a lot of back and forth as players struggle to control spawn points, class upgrades, and are constantly evaluating strategies on the fly.
Boid is currently on Steam Early Access. Usually I’d recommend avoiding Early Access games, but Boid is a quality title and I believe in its future. Also, Boid is priced at $2.99 which is an absolute steal for the amount of fun Boid provides 🙂
