History VideoGame / Genewars

* SmallTaxonomyPools: There are five possible wild creatures and the hybrids of those 5 base creatures. With those, the four humanoid speicies, and the Ethereals, you have every animal speicies that exists.

** Inverted with the human player. In "regular" gameplay, your opponents grow stronger over time as they continue to upgrade their base and kept sending out creatures to attack and weaken you. However, due to ArtificialStupidity and limited AI of your opponents, the enemy specialists are never programmed to destroy your base directly. But you can do that by sending your Engineers to directly demolish their base while having the Rangers defend the Engineers by stunning or killing hostile creatures - At the expense of getting bad karma which the Ethereals will punish you for. However, with foreknowledge of their bases' location and some practice on acting quickly, you can actually go over to wreck the opponents' base at the start of the game and quickly before the Ethereals arrive you can plant some fast-growing plants to turn the bad karma into good.

* HybridPower: The strongest, fastest, most aware or otherwise best in any area is a hybrid creature. Birdomules also get to pick up your own specialists and move them, unique to that species. And the best Mule/Crab worker species are Birdomules and Birdocrabs who can fly and avoid trying to path through the base or forest while moving much faster than most creatures.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: All of the humanoid species respond to your commands in English. Its never explained, no universal translator mentioned although you might assume such a thing exists.

An old RealTimeStrategy game by BullfrogProductions based centrally around using Genetics in [[HybridMonster breeding and cross-breeding creatures]]. Some billions of years ago SufficientlyAdvancedAliens got bored with the universe and moved on, but finally came back. After seeing that Humans and the other three humanoid species warring here were ruining the planets, they put them all on trial and sentenced them to fix and re-colonize planets damaged in the war. Of course, if you [[AllThereInTheManual didn't read the manual]] you never really know why you have to restore the environment for these various planets.

** Averted for the number of Buildings and creatuers you can generate. You can pop out hundreds of mules if you want. Though, if you take it too far you can slow down your game to a crawl when it tries to display all of that on the screen. Fortunately, you can dip in, select them all, and tell them what to do then watch darkness elsewhere and see that they get to where they need to on the minimap.

* ColorCodedMultiplayer: Same colors as in singler player mode, though you need a patch to play Genewars in multiplayer.

* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit

* ArtificialStupidity

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: All creatures have a % of just how much of that creatures genetics work. The better %, the larger and more powerful the creature. You might even manage to produce a creature with 0% for his rating, by having touched a dead body and getting really luck on the RandomNumberGenerator. You can also interbreed Mules, Crabs, Birds, Dinosaurs, and Frogs, and the result can either be (base species)-o-(base species) or inverted. Muleobird is like a mule with bird attributes while Birdomule is a bird with mule attributes. At first they come from a single mule and a single bird, yet the baby's genetics can be dominantly one or the other at random. Or sometimes the baby is just one of their parents speices and not a hybrid. Breed a frog and a bird and get a frog. Still worse, you could breed a Muleocrab with a Dinobird and get a plain Crab as a result. How do those parents manage to spit out a pure crab baby?

* FlyingSaucer
** The main, well, only ship design of the Ethereals is a steel gray flying saucer with bright white circles. The little Ethereals that evaluate the players' stuff also ride miniature flying saucers.
* GameBreakingBug
** Surprisingly there are very few of these. The one most players should be familiar with is the wild birds breeding glitch. Wild critters breed without the need of a specalist, but otherwise do it as the player would. Except that wild birds can breed so quickly that they can multiply into the hundreds ''even when there is no food source''. The player can try to take advantage of this too, it only takes two birds to start. This can be particularly bad on the first level you encounter birds, where you have no base and are trying to complete the objectives through controlled breeding. But if you let the wild birds get out of control you'll have no room to grow plants to feed your creatures to keep breeding or lose your creatures. And since there are hundreds of birds covering most of the planet, it can be nearly impossible to earn enough points to win through the altnerative method, by lets your plants spread naturally earning points.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

* GameBreaker
** This game is much easier when [[spoiler:you figure out exactly where the computer first lands on the map and run over there to destroy them right as the game begins. You can even manage to destroy all three enemy factions in the final level who land one after another before they can ever manage to produce a creature. Though you still have to deal with the half dozen creatures they get to start with.]]

* ThatOneLevel: Several, but one that stands out is one where you start out with a base that has all of its buildings disabled, including what is probably your first Stun Turret. Unless you are lucky, it is very difficult to deal with the hordes of Dinos and Dinocrabs the enemy will send at you. You can either try to manage to break through that endless stream with the computer's infinate goop, [[spoiler:or break into their base with two or more engineers and detonate their gene pod. The etherals don't come until you build an observator that level, so you don't even need to worry about that.]] You can kite the dinos into the winter land and freeze them to death, but its very time consuming to get a base going out there and once you do the land around your base is safe from the cold so the enemy can often manage to get a dino or two in there to destroy your buildings.

* AllThereInTheManual:
** The background story is all there. If you didn't read it, you never find out why you are going around terraforming planets and attacking colonies that apparently were bad to their environment.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish:
** All of the humanoid species respond to your commands in English. Its never explained, no universal translator mentioned although you might assume such a thing exists.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology
** All creatures have a % of just how much of that creatures genetics work. The better %, the larger and more powerful the creature. You might even manage to produce a creature with 0% for his rating, by having touched a dead body and getting really luck on the RandomNumberGenerator. You can also interbreed Mules, Crabs, Birds, Dinosaurs, and Frogs, and the result can either be (base species)-o-(base species) or inverted. Muleobird is like a mule with bird attributes while Birdomule is a bird with mule attributes. At first they come from a single mule and a single bird, yet the baby's genetics can be dominantly one or the other at random. Or sometimes the baby is just one of their parents speices and not a hybrid. Breed a frog and a bird and get a frog. Still worse, you could breed a Muleocrab with a Dinobird and get a plain Crab as a result. How do those parents manage to spit out a pure crab baby?
* BioAugmentation
** When you use a monolith, you can give all of your creatures new abilities. Which oddly enough applies to all creatures of that species that you have. Also works with your specialists, giving them more health and skill.
* CheatCode
** [[spoiler:'salmonaxe' turns on cheats. Then various keys act as cheats.]]
* ColorCodedArmies
** Your Specialists wear different colors, and the entire body of your creatures are team colored.
* ColorCodedMultiplayer
** Same colors as in singler player mode, though you need a patch to play Genewars in multiplayer.
* CommandAndConquerEconomy
** You have to build everything. Your creatures won't even breed unless you tell them to with a specialist, while wild creatures will breed constantly.
* ConstructAdditionalPylons
** Your buildings need energy. If your distributor can't shell out enough, the game lets you know. Constantly. Gets worse if you put far too much in the range of your max level distributor, since there is a maximum amount of energy it can shell out.
* EasyLogistics

* HybridPower
** The strongest, fastest, most aware or otherwise best in any area is a hybrid creature. Birdomules also get to pick up your own specialists and move them, unique to that species. And the best Mule/Crab worker species are Birdomules and Birdocrabs who can fly and avoid trying to path through the base or forest while moving much faster than most creatures.
* MiniGame
** A ShootEmUp MiniGame is available if you beat the game, or press space while viewing the credits.
* NoRecycling
** Averted for deconstructing your own buildings. You get a bit of Goop back from destroying your own buildings or [[spoiler:using your Engineer to recycle ''enemy'' buildings. This is really bad for Ethereal Rep, but vital in certain levels.]] You can also recycle a little goop from your fallen creatures, or theirs.
* WorkerUnit
** This is notable in that Genewars employed three different types of worker units all with different functions. The humanoid specialist Engineer built your buildings for you. Mule and [[HybridMonster Mule derivatives]] can chop down plants and carry them to your Recycling plant for more Goop or Pulper. Crabs and [[HybridMonster Crab derivatives]] on the other hand were required for upgrading your base. This is something of a tough point for Multiplayer Genewars, because you only get Mules and one other creature type. If you don't have crabs, you can't get any upgraded buildings.
* RealTimeStrategy
** Real Time, in the days of Windows 95.
* RetroRocket
** The main design of humanoid spaceships is a classic futuristic rocket, seen between levels, when you start a level, and when you grab more or different specialists.
* ShootEmUp
** The MiniGame that you can play when you beat the game, or through the credits screen, is a space shooter.
* SmallTaxonomyPools
** There are five possible wild creatures and the hybrids of those 5 base creatures. With those, the four humanoid speicies, and the Ethereals, you have every animal speicies that exists.
* SuperDrowningSkills
** Only Crabs know how to swim. Even Frogocrabs can't, but Crabofrogs can. Whats worse is that sometimes [[ArtificialStupidity your specialists decide that the water is a good shortcut to get back to base]] and drown. There goes your 100 skill Engineer. Sometimes if you have mules fighting on the beach and they have monolith powers, they can kick their attackers into the water who will take damage as they quickly try to get out.
* ThatOneLevel
** Several, but one that stands out is one where you start out with a base that has all of its buildings disabled, including what is probably your first Stun Turret. Unless you are lucky, it is very difficult to deal with the hordes of Dinos and Dinocrabs the enemy will send at you. You can either try to manage to break through that endless stream with the computer's infinate goop, [[spoiler:or break into their base with two or more engineers and detonate their gene pod. The etherals don't come until you build an observator that level, so you don't even need to worry about that.]] You can kite the dinos into the winter land and freeze them to death, but its very time consuming to get a base going out there and once you do the land around your base is safe from the cold so the enemy can often manage to get a dino or two in there to destroy your buildings.

* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas
** You have two resources to get. GOOP you can get from drilling into the ground, harvesting plants, or collecting dead creatures. Wood on the other hand can only be gotten through a Pulper or its better versions, and could only use plants. Different plants had different values for what a specimen was worth in Goop or Wood and of course a sprout isn't worth nearly as much as a fully grown plant.

** All creatures have a % of just how much of that creatures genetics work. The better %, the larger and more powerful the creature. You might even manage to produce a creature with 0% for his rating, by having touched a dead body and getting really luck on the RandomNumberGenerator. You can also interbreed Mules, Crabs, Birds, Dinosaurs, and Frogs, and the result can either be (base speices)-o-(base species) or inverted. Muleobird is like a mule with bird attributes while Birdomule is a bird with mule attributes. At first they come from a single mule and a single bird, yet the baby's genetics can be dominantly one or the other at random. Or sometimes the baby is just one of their parents speices and not a hybrid. Breed a frog and a bird and get a frog. Still worse, you could breed a Muleocrab with a Dinobird and get a plain Crab as a result. How do those parents manage to spit out a pure crab baby?

** Played Straight for the 5 Specialists you are allowed to have, and something you might not realize right away. The planet can only have so many plants on it and if any general when you've hit the limit, it won't spawn. But it still generates Etheral Points for you if it was your plant. Hence why you want to destroy the plants your enemy plants.

** When you use a monolith, you can give all of your creatures new abilities. Which oddly enough applies to all creatures of that species that you have.