Mine precious gold from the deformable pixel terrain in order to buy more and better ships, soldiers, weapons, digging tools, and deployable defenses. Use these assets to defend your disembodied brain and bankrupt your opponent! Old-school 2D sidescroller pixel graphics coupled with an extremely detailed physics simulation makes for a mix of nostalgia and surprising gameplay. - Product descriptionSo in the future, you're a Brain in a Jar, on a Worms-like 2D battlefield controlling Mooks. You're competing with other factions on a new, Earth-like planet to find resources and ship them back to civilization, or at least whatever you have left, since you spend pretty much all your money on weaponry. Notable for having an impressively advanced physics and destruction engine, which can allow for a variety of emergent gameplay.The game spent the majority of its time in the public in an unfinished beta state. Created by Data Realms, the Retraux game spent several years as a demo with several test levels, some of which had a six minute time limit, making it in essence a sophisticated toy. Regardless, Data Realms encouraged players to buy the game while in its development stage, for a reduced price than that of the finished game, a model also used successfully by Mount And Blade and (On a cheaper scale) Minecraft. Cortex Command 1.0 was officially released on Steam on September 28, 2012, with a new faction and improved campaign mode.The game features a slowly growing single player campaign with five scenarios currently available. There are several levels available for skirmish mode, and the game features splitscreen multiplayer but no online element. The creator is currently focusing on expanding the campaigns and code for the game while having additional staff work on content as the code rolls out. The game also has a very active modding community and a wide variety of mods that add or change many features in the game as well as adding campaign missions and skirmish areas.The Steam release (and beta Build 27, released several months prior) introduced the campaign mode, which up to four teams compete for control of the planet. A slider allows for determination of the number of mining sites and brains in a game (effectively controlling the game length), with teams capturing and holding said sites to generate income so they can build elaborate defensive installations for their sites, and launch massive assaults to take a site from their foes. The winner is whoever seizes total control of all the sites on the planet and kills all the brains of the enemy.Cortex Command Main Site LinkThe link for the fan forums which also houses the mod community: Forums & Mod Community
This game provides examples of:
Abnormal Ammo: There are a few mods out there. One of the most abnormal is the rocket gun. it doesn't fire explosives, it fires landing craft.
Absurdly Sharp Blade: The RPC is actually the most destructive weapon in the game, but not the most damaging unless you aim right, and can dig through what every other weapon can't, even bunkers.
Artificial Stupidity: The A.I. of the game will continue to drop its mooks into your kill zones, crash drop ships, and generally have horrible accidents.
Awesome Yet Practical: Diggers, which aside from their intended use as mining tools can be easily appropriated to clear obstacles, destroy doors, and act as devastating short-range weapons.
BFG: Several in the core game, including the aptly named Uber Cannon.
Colony Drop: The delivery vehicles that your stuff comes in make remarkably good disposable weapons. It's possible to simply order an empty dropship or rocket and smash it into the enemy.
Or better, order one full of crab bodies and bombs. Then drop it on the enemy base.
Death from Above: The above mentioned crates make a very cheap delivery system for high explosive ordnance, and with the self destruct option can be easily detonated above groups to rain shrapnel on their heads.
Also, dropships can be used to drop bombs on your enemies, which come in Standard (frag) and Napalm variants. For a cheaper option, you can also load them up with stick grenades, since they have an impact fuse.
Disability Superpower: A character's jetpack flight time is directly correlated with how much it weighs. Losing both legs can actually improve your mobility.
Drop Ship: In the game, two are available, and they are fairly important in terms of gameplay. Crates are cheap but total-loss delivery vehicles, and rockets are so very hard to fly that they might as well qualify as total-loss too (as the AI so efficiently demonstrates). The dropships are the only delivery vehicles that can be reasonably expected to make it back to orbit and give the player their purchase price back. They're also easier to use as disposable impact weapons than rockets.
Dug Too Deep: If you set some troops to mine for gold and ignore them, it's entirely possible that they'll mine down so far they'll fall off the map and die — or end up joining their tunnels to an enemy faction's.
Dummied Out: Many of the more powerful Coalition weapons, such as the Mauler shotgun and flak cannon, were removed in later builds. 1.0 reintroduced them as part of the Imperatus faction.
Epic Fail: Dropship accidents and explosives backfiring can make your failure so spectacular it becomes hilarious.
Everything Breaks: As a matter of fact, this is the only way to dig up more resources.
Excuse Plot: The pretty cool plot, which gives room for modding and more potential story, is currently a justification for having a crash-test dummy blow a super-soldier's legs off with a blunderbuss. The key word is 'currently'. We'll be seeing an actual storyline in later builds.
Game Mods: One of the main selling points is the game's mod community, which has produced many different armies (including the SPESS MEHREENS). Mods can cause Loads and Loads of Loading and, if poorly coded, error messages.
Gatling Good: The Coalition faction seems to like them—they have sentry gun and drone varieties, as well as a handheld version.
The Ronin used to have the YAK700, which has since been removed.
Global Currency: Oz, a notation for ounces often used to measure an amount of gold.
Goomba Stomp: Entirely possible, often accidentally. In earlier builds it wasn't uncommon for one or two of your troops to accidentally stomp each other into oblivion as they hopped out of a dropship, although now your troops can freely walk past each other.
Gorn: You can blow off arms, legs, heads, or splatter entire characters into a spray of blood and gibs.
Guns Akimbo: Several Game Mods have 'offhand' variants of weapons they add (usually only SMGs or Pistols), designed to be used with their non-offhand variant.
Improvised Weapon: Almost anything. Shovels, digging tools, Dropships, Automatic Doors (Which you can time to crush enemies, though it requires some skill), Jetpacks...
Implacable Man: Dreadnoughts or certain heavy units can take serious damage and will continue to try and kill you character even if it is by just stepping on them.
However like all units, they will quickly die when being shot with any diggers.
Infinite Supplies: Your troops have to reload, but they always have more magazines.
Jet Pack: Most characters have one, and they're both a.) vital for getting around and b.) comically difficult to steer.
Kill It with Fire: Molotov Cocktails, incendiary bombs from drop ships, incendiary grenades, flame throwers.
The Browncoats specialize in this. Among their weapons are flaming shotguns, flaming assault rifles, flaming artillery cannons, and a very special grenade launcher that can either shoot explosive fireballs or coat the ground in a flammable layer of fuel.
Lethal Joke Item: The crab body is tiny, defenseless, and can't do anything but crawl around. However, they're also free—if you pack several dozen of them into a single rocket or crate, you have yourself a very cheap Big Bulky Bomb that will kill everything on the map in a holocaust of flying crabmeat.
Loads and Loads of Characters: Three playable factions plus two additional ones in game give it a well rounded cast.
Load-Bearing Boss: A minor case. When a brain is destroyed, its minions — and even the doors inside its base — may fall to bits, although not explosively so.
Nanomachines: The Techion faction specialize in nanotechnology. Their Nanolyzer is a digging tool that turns anything it shoots into Grey Goo: as a result it's useless for mining gold, but invaluable for breaking into enemy bunkers. Their Nanorifle is a sniper rifle that disintegrates targets' limbs. And their Nanoswarm grenades explode into vicious clouds of enemy-seeking nanites.
Only a Flesh Wound: Even if all but one of their limbs have been blown off and they're slowly bleeding to death, if a clone still has a gun in his hand, he'll keep on fighting as best he can. And when even that has been torn off, they can always be flown at high speed across the map until a dropship flies low enough and gets an engine shredded by the mad flying clone torso.
Roboteching: The Techion Nucleo Swarm shoots seven plasma projectiles which home in on a target. While they don't turn sharply enough to make them useful in enclosed spaces, out in the open they're a real menace.
In addition, there are many easter eggs hidden on the maps, such as Metroids in zombie cave, and the Pac-Man shaped rock in one of the background images, amoung many other things.
2-D Space: The entire game is 2D, space as well, evidenced by the TradeStar that orbits the planet exactly perpendicular to your eye.
Weaponized Exhaust: the dropships are unarmed, but can be used to quite deadly effect by flying them on top of enemy units and hitting the throttle. The rockets, on the other hand, must be used with extreme care, because their exhaust has the tendency to kill the units they just delivered.
We Cannot Go On Without You/Decapitated Army: If your brain is destroyed, you will automatically lose. Justified, as the units that you order are literally brainless and have to be controlled by you.
as the code rolls out. The game also has a very active modding community and a wide variety of mods that add or change many features in the game as well as adding campaign missions and skirmish areas.The Steam release (and beta Build 27, released several months prior) introduced the campaign mode, which up to four teams compete for control of the planet. A slider allows for determination of the number of mining sites and brains in a game (effectively controlling the game length), with teams capturing and holding said sites to generate income so they can build elaborate defensive installations for their sites, and launch massive assaults to take a site from their foes. The winner is whoever seizes total control of all the sites on the planet and kills all the brains of the enemy.Cortex Command Main Site Link
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