It is a war for land, for oil, for humanity... And, it is for keeps...
Krush Kill n' Destroy is an aussie real-time strategy game made by Melbourne House in 1997. In the year 2079, all-out nuclear war reduced the world to cinders. A group of survivors, appropriately called the Survivors, lived underground for decades until 2141 whereupon the emerged to find the Evolved, a group of mutated humans with a tribe-like social structure. The two groups immediately take a disliking to one another, and war begins anew.
The game was notable for its silly sense of humour, not taking itself seriously at all. The expansion pack, KKnD Xtreme, added more missions and enhancements. The sequel, KKnD2: Krossfire, was released in 1998 and introduced a third faction, the Series 9 robots. It takes 40 years after the first game, revealing that the Survivors lost the first conflict and that they had to call for reinforcements that are only now arriving.
KKND contains examples of:
- After the End: Games take place after the War of 2079, a nuclear war that saw Earth being devastated.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Series 9 robots were originally agricultural units. When the War of 2079 happened, all their crops were lost and they were put out of employment. This made them quite angry, and decided that only logical course of action was to kill all other intelligent lifeforms.
- Artificial Stupidity: Your units need to be relentlessly babysat in order to survive unscathed as any unit that is idle will wait for a few seconds before attacking which allows the enemy to get the first shot on them.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The Survivor Saboteur and Evolved Vandal are used to protect your buildings and to destroy the enemy's buildings via garrisoning and infiltration. How this works is that each building has a third bar that is indicated with red boxes which increases if a friendly enters the building and decreases if a hostile infiltrates it. The building is instantly destroyed (with the attacker being awarded the building's cost) if it gets infiltrated when there are no more red boxes. It's generally much more efficient to just shoot up the building than to use Saboteurs/Vandals.
- Bombers do a lot of damage that can wipe out an entire army or seriously damage buildings, but they can't be controlled, are single-use, fly in from a random point off map and can be targeted by every unit. If they have to pass an enemy army on the way to their target, they will most likely never arrive.
- The top-tier "vehicles" (Missile Crab and Auto-Cannon Tank) of both sides look impressive (so much that they are featured in the intro), but are not quite as good as the second best (Giant Beetle and Barrage Craft). While on their own they can both deal and take more damage, they are more expensive and take up more space. Both second-best units also deal splash damage, mitigating there lower nominal damage.
- Beast of Battle: The Evolved equivalent of vehicles are big weapon-hauling animals. One of the most notorious is War Mastodon toting two cannons. Probably a nod to the Mammoth Tank of Command & Conquer series.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Most of the Evolved "Vehicle" Units are giant mutated insects and crustaceans.
- Black Comedy: Oh there is A LOT of it in this game. For example the official instruction booklet [1]
mentions that the nuclear war turned most people into ashes which saved money on the cremation costs! Also from the booklet are many jokes on how units can kill or get killed. - Canis Major: The Dire Wolf, the Evolved's scout unit. Mutant wolves which are ridden horseback by a guy with a shotgun.
- Command & Conquer Economy: No Oil = No RUs (Resource Units) = No Building/Production = Death.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: And what an understatement this is.
- Not Playing Fair With Resources: Computer players get infinite oil. You don't.
- The All-Seeing A.I.: The Computer always knows where your base is. Always. Not only that, but it always knows where are you amassing your forces and how strong those forces are, thus reacting accordingly to your movements that it shouldn't reasonably be aware of.
- Cold Sniper: Arguably the best unit in the game is the Survivor's Sniper (the top-tier infantry). Outranging any of the previous troops.
- Cool Bike: Evolved use one with a side-passenger seat while Survivors use a stand alone bike in the first game. In the second game, the Evolved have abandoned the use of vehicles while the Survivors have switched to a fully-enclosed fast attack bike.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Sequel reveals that humans lost the first conflict, but also that both sides send away some of their troops to build a second army which is now coming for a round 2.
- Do Not Run with a Gun: Mostly averted and only played straight in a realistic fashion. Most units have a turret that can independently fire while moving.
- Faction-Specific Endings: Depending which side player fights. Each one ends in total annihilation of the other side(s). KKND 2 reveals that in the first conflict both sides destroyed each other, forcing humans to retreat back to underground.
- Fantastic Racism: Humans consider Mutants/Evolved to be "freaks" and thus deserving to be exterminated. Mutants, on the other hand, consider symmetry to be abominations and want to destroy humans for that reason (and to prevent a new Scourge a.k.a. nuclear war)
- Fantastic Slur: The Evolved call the Survivors "Symmetrics".
- Firebreathing Weapon: The flamethrower troops each faction can build plus the The Survivor faction's Flame ATV.
- Future Primitive: This applies to the Evolved with their tribal infrastructure for example. It often includes bones.
- Gatling Good: The Survivor's Final-Tier Vehicle is the Autocannon Tank. The Evolved's Final-Tier Infantry is a Minigun-User called "Crazy Harry" and their final tier turret is their Rotary Cannon.
- Giant Enemy Crab: The Evolved use a Missile Crab as a heavy tank.
- Harmony Versus Discipline: Evolved have reached harmony with the post-nuclear war environment. Survivors want to reclaim the surface so they can rebuild the old world. This is more pronounced in the first game, while in the second game Series 9 is a wild card, being both scientifically oriented, but also more nature oriented due to their agricultural nature.
- Humongous Mecha: The Mech or Sentinel Droid found in the rare tech bunkers which are very powerful with their plasma weaponry.
- Hypocritical Humor: One of the reactions of the Evolved communications guys to encountering the Survivors — Evaluation: Man, these guys are freaks!
- Kill It with Fire: The flame based weapons are effective for pretty much all units and buildings but short ranged.
- Large Ham: The Evolved actors are having a lot more fun with their roles than the Survivors'.
- Lost in Transmission: This happens on the last Survivor's mission as the general is telling you important information. The reason for it is because the Evolved were attacking the communication shack.
- Macross Missile Massacre: The Survivor's barrage craft. Fresh out of boot camp, they shoot there missiles in the enemy's general direction like a Stalin Organ (which is still quite effective versus infantry clusters). Veteran Unit shoot them all at their target. A cluster of barrage crafts firing is quite a sight to behold.
- Made of Explodium: Every moderately large unit explodes on death, even biological ones.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Read the scrolling text on the side as a mission briefing plays. It often contains a lot of random jokes and non-sequiturs.
- Molotov Cocktail: The Evolved Rioter uses these.
- Multiple Head Case: The two faces of the female mutant in the second game do not get along.
- Mutants The Evolved faction: The humans that mutated due to the radiation and viruses of the war. Said humans became tribal and good with taming wild animals to join them.
- Nicknaming the Enemy: The Survivors call the Evolved, "freaks", while the Evolved retaliate with "symmetrics".
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Nintendo Hard: This game LOVES Rush-Style Players. If you're not good at rushing, you WILL get annihilated by the computer over and over and over again. You must either rush or use cheating devices to win at this game. - Non-Entity General: On the Survivors' side the player is referred to as the Commander and on the Evolved's side they are referred to as Takamhom.
- Nuclear Mutant: This is what happened to a lot of the Evolved creatures which makes them huge!
- Point Defenseless: Towers are a waste of money if your base does not have any good chokepoints, such as cliffs, to funnel in the enemy.
- Raised Hand of Survival: Invoked, apprioriately enough, by Survivors faction, whose banner sports a hand punching its way from below the rocky ground.
- Scenery Porn: As the player fights through the map they will come across various destroyed buildings, vehicles and other structures sadly left behind because of the war.
- Self-Deprecation: In the third Survivor mission, the communications guys opine that possible career options for an incompetent infantryman include "Video Game Cinema Writer".
- Sentry Gun: The Evolved have manual versions of these and the Survivors have automatic ones.
- Shout-Out: One of the bunker weapons is aptly named Gort The Robot since he's a robot that resembles Gort from the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still. He bends over and shoots radiation that can kill a unit or building within seconds! He's only available in one of the extra missions though rather than the campaign.
- Title Drop: One of the responses for the Mech super unit? "Krush, Kill and Destroy", of course.
- Too Awesome to Use: Tech Bunker Units are overpowered game breakers that can decimate enemy units and structures with little difficulty. But if you're not very careful with using them, they'll be lost forever. Especially since they cannot be repaired at either factions' Repair Facility, as such, steady micro-management of these tide-turning units are of utmost importance.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: There is only one resource, oil, which is used to buy everything.
- Veteran Unit: Units will gain XP by attacking units, which will change the border of their Life Meter from gray to blue to red. Veteran Units will shoot faster and with better accuracy, and an exclusive bonus for Veteran Infantry is Regenerating Health.
- Wicked Wasps: Wasps. The bombers of the Evolved that are built by the player but indirectly controlled. They can have their targets chosen but they themselves can't be moved other than that.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The title, with "crush" being spelled with a "k" rather than a "c" and the word "and" being represented with an "n" with an apostrophe.
- Zerg Rush: The computer's only method of winning. Happens periodically and will cause the player to use if they aren't prepared!
