Review: Uniwar

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First, let me get this out of the way. If there is an awful thing about Uniwar is the price. Take a breath. Okay here goes: on the iPhone it costs $0.99. On Android it costs $4.99. Deep breath. Another one. Okay, good. Let’s do this.

Uniwar is a turn based strategy game that is basically Risk mashed up with Starcraft. Despite its price weirdness, it’s not a bad game at all. Begin reading this review knowing that it’s written from the point of view of a guy who isn’t into “real time” strategy games. As a matter of fact I’m not into strategy games either (I played through about half of Advanced Wars 2 and about 1/3 of both Starcraft and Warcraft).

I started playing Uniwar (on iPhone of course – who wants to pay $5 for it on Android?) when everyone on The GAMES DAY Podcast team started asking me why I hadn’t yet. As with all strategy games like it, no matter how realistic I am about how much time I’ll be spending playing it, peer pressure is always the lure and it always succeeds.

Identitcal to Starcraft’s setup, Uniwar features three races: Sapiens (the well-rounded human team), the Krhaeleans (the bugs: fast and cheap), and the Titans (powerful aliens who can teleport). As with all games like this, each of the three races have their own abilities and advantages as well as units they can assemble to take on their enemies.

It took about four tries, but I eventually finished the campaign, which features 21 levels. You play seven levels as each of the three races progressing from the Sapiens, through the Khraleans, to the Titans. The missions are similar but some of them do some interesting things like “defend your bases” or “defeat your opponent in 40 rounds” in modes designed to show you how each behaves.

Where Uniwar really shines is in multiplayer mode. You can play against up to four people at once and the game features 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 and team modes. As I’ve mentioned, play is turn-based with you moving each of your units, building, and destroying whatever you can during your turn.

I found the gameplay interesting and fairly easy to get the hang of. There are easy, normal, and hard game modes to offer up the chance to replay missions.

In the end, even though I’m not good at this type of game and typically don’t like them, I’ve had a lot of fun with Uniwar. If you’re into strategy games and have friends who’ll go easy on you (can you please send me their usernames? Mine are heartless jerks), Uniwar is worth a look.

Protip:

Always try to capture bases. Even if you don’t have units who can capture and convert them to your side, make sure you smother enemy bases with your own units (ie: put a tank on your enemy’s base). They will still gain credits for owning the base, but the base itself won’t be able to build new units while you’re parked on it. Bring some more units over to protect the squatter and you’ll do fine. As a matter of fact, if you kill all of your opponents’ units and occupy all of their bases (even if they are not owned by you), you’ll win the match because the computer will see they have no way to build units fight and no units on the board to combat with.