Publisher: Blendo Games Developer: Blendo Games Year of Release: 2010 Platforms: PC, XBLIG (Xbox Live Indie Games) My fleet has been travelling through space for two months now when we stumbled on a ship full of Rastafarians fleeing the police. I had a choice – do I help them to flee or hand them in? I obviously chose to help them. Why? Because these weren’t any Rastafarians fleeing the police. This was a ship of Rastafarian cats, complete with fancy multi-coloured hats. The setup of Flotilla is very simple – your space captain has been given seven months to live. He goes out on one final journey aiming to travel as far as possible before his time is up. Each planet has something special about it. It can effectively be one of two things. The first is like the Rastafarian cats. It is a simple choose-your-own-adventure style thing where your decisions lead to a story. You might become karaoke champion of the universe , invent your own cocktail, trade your eye for a fancy bit of space gear or simply stare into the abyss. There are loads of different events like this and they are all really funny or just bizarre as they quite often satire the most common trope of science fiction. The other type is when someone else is simply a dick and decides to attack you. This then switches over to a turn based combat mode.  The first thing to note is that because your in space there is no ground – the map is entirely in 3D with the player controlling both the planar and vertical motion along with facing as well. This mean you have to concentrate on finding the best way to get into your enemies weak spot by using the advantage of height and flanking. Most of the enemy ships reflect damage at the front and on top, so your ships must frantically get underneath or behind an opponent in order to blow it to pieces and send those Space Deer into the cold vacuum. However, some ship weapons (mainly the close quarter beam weapons) can get through all the armour at certain ranges. Between battles you can also upgrade your ships with extra parts in order to gain an edge. However this cargo can occasionally be stolen off you by various events or you can trade it for better options. Additionally, some other events can grant you other ships than your standard missile armed destroyer – these range from the close quarter beam gunships up to the dreadnaughts which laugh in the face of adversity. However due to the time limit, it is very rare you will end up being overwhelmed by controlling a massive fleet which is a little bit of a shame The main campaign is designed to be played over and over again. It numbers each of your adventures and also assigns a score at the end based on your actions and your remaining ships so it turns into a constant score improving adventure. To make it even better you can also play the campaign in splitscreen co-op by using an Xbox 360 controller, with each player controlling one half of  the fleet. It makes it fun just to suddenly decide the choices in campaign mode before switching to fancy tactics and manoeuvres in the battle mode. It makes the game even better as the simple but deep gameplay make it easy to pick up – I’ve had a few games with my Dad which he picked up almost instantly and had a great time. There is also a two player skirmish mode, allowing you to either go up against the AI or a splitscreen partner with a variety of different ships, from the dreadnaught down to the mini car shaped fighter plane. It is a quite fun mode but it does lack the humour of the campaign. The graphics for Flotilla are nice and simplistic -  the ships are simply shapes hanging in space in a single colour. Space itself is a pleasing orange colour, dotted with simplistic ship wreckage and asteroids. Even the main menu is simplistic. In the campaign, the drawings of the various is very stylistic with some really funny ones of some of the better events. However the best part of the presentation is the music. In battle, your actions are accompanied to Chopin’s piano music making each one haunting to play through. There are also some really funny sound effects as well from the karaoke soundtrack of that event to the joyful celebration after you down a ship. It is such good fun that you can’t help but feel happy when you play it. Flotilla is a very simple, very fun game from a studio of indie devs who make really stylistically fun games. It is cheap but offers endless replayability and a constant impulsive desire to play one more quick adventure. It is also great to play over a lunchbreak as each adventure takes a maximum of 20 minutes. For its price, pick it up.

Publisher: Blendo Games
Developer: Blendo Games
Year of Release: 2010
Platforms: PC, XBLIG (Xbox Live Indie Games)

My fleet has been travelling through space for two months now when we stumbled on a ship full of Rastafarians fleeing the police. I had a choice – do I help them to flee or hand them in? I obviously chose to help them. Why?

Because these weren’t any Rastafarians fleeing the police. This was a ship of Rastafarian cats, complete with fancy multi-coloured hats.

The setup of Flotilla is very simple – your space captain has been given seven months to live. He goes out on one final journey aiming to travel as far as possible before his time is up.

Each planet has something special about it. It can effectively be one of two things. The first is like the Rastafarian cats. It is a simple choose-your-own-adventure style thing where your decisions lead to a story. You might become karaoke champion of the universe , invent your own cocktail, trade your eye for a fancy bit of space gear or simply stare into the abyss. There are loads of different events like this and they are all really funny or just bizarre as they quite often satire the most common trope of science fiction.

The other type is when someone else is simply a dick and decides to attack you. This then switches over to a turn based combat mode.  The first thing to note is that because your in space there is no ground – the map is entirely in 3D with the player controlling both the planar and vertical motion along with facing as well. This mean you have to concentrate on finding the best way to get into your enemies weak spot by using the advantage of height and flanking. Most of the enemy ships reflect damage at the front and on top, so your ships must frantically get underneath or behind an opponent in order to blow it to pieces and send those Space Deer into the cold vacuum. However, some ship weapons (mainly the close quarter beam weapons) can get through all the armour at certain ranges.

Between battles you can also upgrade your ships with extra parts in order to gain an edge. However this cargo can occasionally be stolen off you by various events or you can trade it for better options. Additionally, some other events can grant you other ships than your standard missile armed destroyer – these range from the close quarter beam gunships up to the dreadnaughts which laugh in the face of adversity. However due to the time limit, it is very rare you will end up being overwhelmed by controlling a massive fleet which is a little bit of a shame

The main campaign is designed to be played over and over again. It numbers each of your adventures and also assigns a score at the end based on your actions and your remaining ships so it turns into a constant score improving adventure. To make it even better you can also play the campaign in splitscreen co-op by using an Xbox 360 controller, with each player controlling one half of  the fleet. It makes it fun just to suddenly decide the choices in campaign mode before switching to fancy tactics and manoeuvres in the battle mode. It makes the game even better as the simple but deep gameplay make it easy to pick up – I’ve had a few games with my Dad which he picked up almost instantly and had a great time.

There is also a two player skirmish mode, allowing you to either go up against the AI or a splitscreen partner with a variety of different ships, from the dreadnaught down to the mini car shaped fighter plane. It is a quite fun mode but it does lack the humour of the campaign.

The graphics for Flotilla are nice and simplistic -  the ships are simply shapes hanging in space in a single colour. Space itself is a pleasing orange colour, dotted with simplistic ship wreckage and asteroids. Even the main menu is simplistic. In the campaign, the drawings of the various is very stylistic with some really funny ones of some of the better events. However the best part of the presentation is the music. In battle, your actions are accompanied to Chopin’s piano music making each one haunting to play through. There are also some really funny sound effects as well from the karaoke soundtrack of that event to the joyful celebration after you down a ship. It is such good fun that you can’t help but feel happy when you play it.

Flotilla is a very simple, very fun game from a studio of indie devs who make really stylistically fun games. It is cheap but offers endless replayability and a constant impulsive desire to play one more quick adventure. It is also great to play over a lunchbreak as each adventure takes a maximum of 20 minutes. For its price, pick it up.