Delphyq is a 3D strategy shooter being developed by Beyond Red Wave Arts, where you are in control of a unit of soldiers that have to fight their way to an objective or take out the enemies in the level. It is reminiscent of Xcom, but instead of having a turn-based combat system it is all real-time. You control the flow of battle and the strategies and positioning of your soldiers will either spell victory or defeat. Now, having to manage 5 soldiers all at once is quite the challenge. Thankfully, they added a mechanic where you can pause the battle at any time and give the necessary orders to your units and then execute on them. This makes moving them all simultaneously very easy and can help turn the tables on dire situations. This is important as you have several different types of units that all have their own unique abilities and uses. You have the silent Assassin, the quick CQC fighters, the powerful Heavys, the accurate Sniper, the helpful Support/Medic, and the Tech who has an array of utilities and tools to help aid the other units.
Another important mechanic of the game is that you also have control of where your unit is looking. Now this doesn’t sound like a unique or amazing feature, but it can make the difference in combat and adds a whole lot of depth to the game. This will allow you to have your units do actions like strafe and have them watch each others backs. Vision is very important in that it controls if you are able to see the enemy units, of course, and if you can shoot them. All of your units have a cone that stretches out in front of them. It is called the Effective Weapon Range (EFR). If something that isn’t on your team is inside that cone, your character will try to light that guy up like a bonfire. This gives you a pretty good idea where your unit will be able to attack and if an enemy is out of range or not.
Once you are outside of combat, you are taken to the screen where you are able to upgrade your units and plan for the next mission. This is called the Corkboard. Here, you use resources that you have gathered from your missions to do several things in preparation for the next one. You can heal units who have taken damage from previous missions. You can upgrade them to make them more effective in combat. You can also buy the insertion points of the next mission as well as the extraction points. This helps give you a good idea what the next map is going to look like and can help you plan if things start to go bad. Overall, this game puts a lot of emphasis on strategy and placement and that really makes this unique and one hell of a strategy game.
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Played it? We’d love to know what you thought about it.
