Alien Worms Invasion is a cynical rip-off of Kingdom. Not Kingdom Rush though this bills itself as a Tower Defense game but Kingdom: Nothing Lasts.

I really like Kingdom, possibly more than is healthy, so when I saw an alien themed Kingdom clone I thought that would be right up my alley. Unfortunately Mímir Studio copied Kingdom's mechanics but failed to understand its soul.

(I should probably mention that Alien Worms Invasion feels unfinished and has at least one potentially game breaking bug but I'll cover that later).

Kingdom was great because everything tied together. There were long periods spent galloping across the map but they were almost cathartic. The fluid motion of the horse coupled with the sun in the trees and the rushes blowing in the river meant traversing the map was a treat rather than frustrating. Alien Worms Invasion has a frame for going slowly and a frame for going fast (the rider flicks forward slightly), the backgrounds are a single static image with none of the blowing leaves or the rippling water of its inspiration.

Kingdom had fields of rabbits and deer that could be hunted by archers who would collect their coins during the day and could then be 'asked' to give those coins up to their monarch when met; it felt alive. Alien Worms Invasion has a swarm of blue crystal beatles that mostly get ignored by the soldiers. When they are occasionally shot the beatle becomes replaced by a big blue crystal; it's very abrupt. Why don't the soldiers go hunting and foraging like Kingdom's archers? And why do they just ignore the beatles? I'm pretty certain that's not supposed to happen.

The only reason to leave the base - because soliders don't collect coins and take them to the far walls - is to collect humans from the Hives. The vagrant camps have been replaced by utterly generic alien torture buildings (again static). When offered a crystal the Hive will give up it's cocooned civilian who will run back to the base to pick up whatever drills, drones or guns that have been manufactured.

The drills are for crystal mines - the equivalent of Farms in Kingdom. The guns are, obviously, for soliders; and the drones are the equivalent of engineers. Almost. The drones are a slight problem: in Kingdom when an engineer is hit he drops his hammer and runs back to the castle. Unless he is hit again, then he drops his coin and turns back into an untouchable vagrant. In Alien Worms Invasion when a done is destroyed the civilian inside is killed too and Alien Worms Invasion already has a slower civilian spawn rate than Kingdom's vagrants. It's easilly possible for all the stupid (and fast) drones to kill themselves on a single badly placed tree crystal and then have to wait a day or more to get even a single civilan back again.

The alien forest is 'cut' down by clicking crystals into the trees. Unfortunately again the mechanic has been copied from Kingdom but it hasn't been understood. In Kingdom every tree that is cut down returns two coins, the coin thrown to mark the tree and an extra one. This allows for last gasp forestry when you really need one or two extra coins. Alien Worms Invasion returns one coin for each tree disintegrated, there is no profit in it, and, once you've extend your base to the mine, there is no real need for tree removal.

Not having the same pressure to deforest the forest is fortunate because it's broken. This is the potentially game breaking bug I mentioned. When the forest exends passed a radar tower the trees of the forest further from the base will no longer accept crystals; effectively ending any base expansion.

Again not needing to expand is a misunderstood Kingdom mechanic. The animationless hoverbike uses stamina to go fast but uses less stamina when over a road in the base - just like Kingdom's horse. However there is a cheap, early upgrade that gives the bike infinite stamina rendering the need to expand the base to build roads redundant.

Further Kingdom had no interface - except for the bag of gold that represented both health and wealth. Alien Worms Invasion has health bars, stamina bars, power ups, building information, tool tips and current and future tasks. But somewhow fails to convey that information as well as Kingdoms environment queues. It really, really is an utterly soulless, cynical cash-in on Kingdom.

I could discuss the lacking and jarring sound effects and the elevator muzak; I could discuss how placing crystals often fails or how broken the English in it is. But. I'm tired of this now.

Alien Worms Invasion is not worth your time, it's not worth your money. It's boring, broken and insipid.

Very frustrating.
The game has great potential, but instead the developers chose to make you go back and forth from one edge of the map to another (which can take a couple of minutes) to gather resources or handle some crisis.

Too bad.

I like this type of game's. If you like "Kingdom" you gona like this game :)

I'm enjoying this game a good bit, it is like kingdoms, but it does need alittle more work for sure. upgrades for booster and also to let you k now when you are being attacked.

In addition, there are several elements that could be explained better.

But it's kingdoms with slightly more management.

Boring game.

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