Battle of Frigates

In Brief

A top down shooter on the lines of Tanks

Introduction:

Battle of Frigates is top down shooter where you have to survive the onslaught of enemy frigates, their bosses, land based cannons and wandering mines. There are several tasks to accomplish over the 20 levels; for example, searching for the treasure, rescuing ship wrecked sailors or defeating the enemy. Collect bonuses that will improve your ship, make it faster, stronger, and able to withstand more hits. In later levels you can escape in on-board dinghies if your ship is about to sink and find new ships so that you can carry on the fight.

The Game:

This is another of those £0.79/$0.99 games created with the free Construct 2 engine; though you can buy assets to add to the basic game engine. Battle of Frigates looks like a version of Tanks, but set on a sea faring group of islands. Movement is using the WASD keys. no instructions are given at the start of the game. The game always defaults to the Russian language when you restart the game, but changing the language is easy enough as you just have to click on the middle (Options) button to get the language selection screen up, which includes several language options (the first time i've seen more than English and Russian available in a construct 2 game. See image below for details of the various languages you can select. There are twenty levels to work through. To progress from level to level you have to destroy all the enemy ships using your cannon. This is activated using the left mouse button and aiming is accomplished by the mouse cursor. You can pick up bonuses such as extra cannon ammo, speed ups to make your frigate go faster, or shields to protect your ship by being able to take more hits. Watch out for the wandering mines that will destroy your ship if touched. Also, as well as roaming enemy ships you'll find land based cannons and the occasional boss to contend with. bosses take a lot more hits to destroy. All of these can be destroyed by your cannon, however you do have limited supplies of cannon balls, so be careful. There are missions to complete as well where you have to rescue shipwrecked sailors. I found the game quite easy once I realised there was limited ammo, though aiming was a little difficult as I could barely distinguish the mouse pointed on the brightly coloured level design. Otherwise a reasonable game, especially if you enjoy tank based games.

You can see a few videos of game play HERE, HERE and HERE

Conclusion:

Overall I found the game quite challenging as you can only take a few hits of damage and there are at least four or more ships to destroy as well as gun emplacements scattered among the island plus you are limited in the amount of ammo you can carry. Most resupplies of cannon balls are near land based gun emplacements, so to pick up extra cannons you need to be fast to avoid being hit more than a few times. You'll see indicators in the top left of the game screen that show the number of enemy ships, the amount of ammo you have, the strength of your ship and the number of mines to avoid or destroy. You can see a mixed bag of Steam community reviews HERE.