New Eden Radio reviews: Drone Swarm

Developer:  Stillalive Studios

Publisher: Astragon Entertainment

Release Date: 20 OCT 2020

Review Date: October – November 2020

Platform: PC

Price at time of Review: 24.99 USD

Reviewed by: DJ Daggaroth

Hi All, DJ Daggaroth here with a new release into the strategy genre: Drone Swarm.   A space themed click and drag strategy that puts you in command of tens of thousands of drones to attack, manipulate your enemies, defend your ship, and enhance your allies.    Drone Swarm is a first-person strategy game that offers a unique take on strategy that can appeal to both casual gamers and the more serious strategy enthusiasts.

Gameplay:

Score: 8/10

The primary gameplay mechanic surrounding Drone Swarm is your ability to charge your drones with a particular power or ability and then using your mouse, draw a line where you want that ability to go.  You have to then keep up with what is going on with the battle field and use friendly and enemy ship movement to your advantage as in most cases, enemy ships will not just sit still and let you run them through with attack drones.    In many instances I found that using the kinetic power that lets you move and manipulate ships and some aspects of the environment to be quite favorable compared to just direct attack.   Enemy warps in a big ship? Knock its escorts into it until they both explode!    Have some asteroids traveling through the map?  Knock a few of them into your enemies!   That was a great deal more fun than just turning on the attack power and having the drones attack enemies directly.   You can also use your defensive ability which creates a wall of drones that employ shields to protect yourself or key objectives, but you can use that ability to stop enemy ship movement as well, allowing you to time offensive abilities to better advantage.  There are also upgrades that can adjust various aspects of the 4 key abilities that I had access to during my time playing Drone Swarm that added new complexity and tactics to my playbook to use while going up against my foes.

Audio:

Score: 8/10:

Drone Swarm did a good job at providing music that accompanied the environment and situation and would change to compliment the scenario at the time.  While not groundbreaking, the music compliments the game which is really what it is there for at the end of the day.

Overall:

Score: 7.8 / 10

While it has its flaws, Drone Swarm scratches an itch I had been feeling for a while.  It also brings the unique gameplay of controlling the drones which I found easy to pick up and understand but difficult to master, leading to some really rewarding times when some well-placed swipes of the mouse lead to a big enemy ship getting swept up in my attacks.    I enjoyed the experience and would recommend it to anyone would is interested in a game that dares to offer something new!