Chroma Squad was a game I desperately wanted to check out at PAX East earlier this month; however, due to time constraints I was unable to do so. Thankfully, hope was not lost! The guys over at Behold Studios, an independent game company based out of Brazil, were nice enough to send me a copy of their PAX demo! This gave me the opportunity to check out their “tactical turn-based manager game” before its Summer launch.
In Chroma Squad you play as a sentai TV show producer for an indie film company. You’ll be responsible for hiring actors, recording episodes, and crafting props for your show. Your job is to make the greatest sentai TV show ever. What makes this game so entertaining is that you not only control the overall management of the show, but you also get to control each actor during filming.
Manage your actors color, name, race, wardrobe, etc.
The game is at its best when it’s time to record an episode of the show, which you can name at the beginning of the game — I named mine “Power Force”. As soon as the camera’s start rolling, and filming commences, Chroma Squad goes from being a smooth management game to being one that resembles the classic turn-based Final Fantasy games.
At one point in my demo, while filming an episode for Power Force, I was introduced to the episode’s “boss”, or villain of the week, who happened to be a giant plant monster of sorts. After fighting off the monster’s minions, it was time for “The Power Force” to turn their attention to the main antagonist. I had to use all five members of my Power Force team in order to defeat this relentless villain. Plant Guy, I’ll call him, ended up overpowering four of my Power Force members, but he was eventually beat into submission by the last remaining member of the Power Force, Sarah Lee.
The battle was not over though. After the other members of my team woke up from their daze, Plant Guy — in good ole fashioned Power Rangers style — turned into a skyscraper sized monster. My team quickly combined their forces and became a massive mechanized warrior, ready to lay down the smack on super-sized Plant Guy.
Here strategy became just as imperative as it was when I was fighting as five separate people. My mech warrior had four different unique abilities and a basic attack as well. The abilities were: an improved shield defense, a self healing ability, a punch attack that was more powerful than my normal blow, and finally a sword attack that dealt a good amount of damage. I had to be careful and sequence the use of my special abilities because there is a cool down time for each ability, and the time differed for each one.
I eventually beat the monster and ended the week’s episode. As the episode ended I was thrown back into the management game I began with and decided it was time to use some cash. I could have used the money to buy supplies such as helmets, suits, props, or items to help me craft, but I had to be watchful of the money so that I didn’t overspend.
The creators of Chroma Squad did a surprising job at creating a game that felt like it was two different games, and because of this I think it has an advantage of not becoming some dual game you quickly become tired of. It’ll be interesting to see what else I’ll be able to do during battles and with the shows management system once the final game releases this Summer for Windows PC, Mac and Linux.
Chroma Squad can be pre-ordered right now via their main site.
