Rescue Team

In Brief

Rescue Team is a casual Time Management game.

Introduction:

Control the rescue workers who rebuild three islands in the wake of devastating weather! Repair damaged restaurants, houses, and sawmills to produce necessary resources. Race against the clock to collect gems, put out fires, and save stranded swimmers!

Reference accessed HERE. 3rd May 2019 2019

Installation:

Rescue Team downloads to a 56.8 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 65.8 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Rescue Team

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

The Game:

In Rescue Team, players rebuild three islands that have been hit by a terrible storm by repairing houses and facilities, removing debris, and performing other helpful tasks. At its heart the game is very similar to My Kingdom for the Princess and its ilk, just transferred to a modern setting and with less charm or strategic depth.

Rescue Team features 60 levels scattered over three different islands. There is only one mode in which you can finish levels with gold, silver, or bronze scores depending on your time, and with those scores and the resulting money you can reconstruct your own home that has been damaged by the tornado, too. The game lacks a proper tutorial, which won’t be too bad for people who are already used to this type of game, but beginners might have serious problems to get into it. At least it’s not really possible to fail, so if you don’t care that much for the full restoration of your home you can take as much time as you like for each level.

Each level consists of a few goals and presents slightly varying maps to the player. It could be that you have to save villagers by boat or helicopter, collect gems, or to repair certain structures. All these goals can be supported or fulfilled by your staff, the members of the rescue team, which simply replace workers from similar titles. For nearly every action that you let your workers perform a resource is needed, but in most cases you will also get a different resource in return. Those include gold, wood, and food, neither a very complex nor a very innovative mixture, but it still works.

Most of the times you have to remove debris from the streets, rebuild structures such as houses (which produce gold), sawmills (which produce wood), or hot dog stands (which produce, you guess it, food), or free workers who are trapped behind large rocks by collecting and using dynamite. Villagers can be saved by constructing the helipad or the boathouse and clicking them, which will also cost a good chunk of your gold reserves. Fires can be extinguished in a similar manner. Rescue Team also features bonuses that can be collected and will provide different results, such as a quicker produce of a specific resource or speeding up your staff members.

Compared to My Kingdom for the Princess or Roads of Rome, Rescue Team feels pretty light when it comes to presentation and diversity. The maps have a rather cartoonish look but are not very detailed or vibrant. The same can be applied to the goals – pretty quickly you will feel like doing the same over and over again, and the initially steep but later on stagnating grade of difficulty does not really help there.

Another aspect which restricts complexity and playing fun is that you are not able to upgrade buildings or hire new workers. Furthermore you are not able to chain actions, so you are mostly waiting for your workers to return to the headquarter to give new orders. Flawed controls and too simplified game play certainly do not warrant a recommendation for any game normally, but the otherwise smooth game play and the motivation to beat every level in the shortest amount of time prevent Rescue Team from being a real dud.

The game is a solid addition to the genre, although it’s by no means the best in its class. The graphics are far from outstanding, and the variety of goals, features and level design is very restricted, but for fans of an under-represented genre it is still worth a shot due to its challenging nature and the decent playing time.

Reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by David Becker on Apr 21, 2011, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 3rd May 2019

Conclusion:

A decent first outing for the popular Rescue Team franchise. Apart from the first few levels, the game is quite challenging if you aim to get gold on each level. The house restoring mini game was okay. It took my mind off the TM aspect of the game, which too be honest is not my favorite genre; however, these building TM games are much better than the shop based ones (IMO) where you're serving customers and trying to keep them happy. The only real negative was most levels were fairly similar and the game lacks a proper tutorial. Not that regulars familiar with this sub genre would need one. 7 out of 10 for game play. Graphics let it down a little as they look oddly dated compared to other games from 2011.

Other Reviews and Videos of Rescue Team:

You can read mostly positive comments from the Steam community comments about Rescue Team HERE

Also, you can see a few in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE & HERE

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game free 24/7 via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Steam for £3.99.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Rescue Team to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Rescue Team and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Rescue Team doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums). Also, check out the latest giveaway from Epic Games. The multiple award winning physics based puzzle / construction game World of Goo, which you'll find HERE; (I was involved in the alpha and beta tests for this game and still think it's one of the best physics puzzlers of its type). The next free game via Epic Games called Untold Stories starts on 16th May. Indie Gala have updated their free section HERE with three more games added to the 20+ free games ( i.e. The Cryptographer a word game, as well as a car racing game called Solus Stunts, and a Gradus style action shooter called Jacob's Fantastic SeXXXual Voyage {unsuitable for children due to explicit nature of the game}); also, there are nine pages (15 games per page) of free games available via Steam HERE