Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / Convoy

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/convoy_game.png
Ain't she a beautiful sight?
Convoy is Roguelike game that describes itself as a mix of FTL and Mad Max. It was developed by Convoy Games and published by Indietopia Games on April 21st, 2015, after first getting funded on Kickstarter and spending some time in Steam Early Access.

At the start of a new game, you pick your main vehicle type (though all but one need to be unlocked through beating challenges) and the two supporting ones you'll start with. Then, the few paragraphs of text outline your situation as an officer on a spaceship that got so battered by an ion storm it had to make an emergency landing on the desert planet of Omek Prime, and now needs to obtain four replacement parts there in order to fly again. Of course, it won't be easy, as the planet is utterly lawless, and the only way to deal with the threats from raiders, privateers and T.O.R.V.A.K. is to travel in the titular convoys.

No relation to 1978 film by Sam Peckinpah. However, see Skyshine's Bedlam for another 2015 Sci-Fi / Post Apocalyptic roguelike set on a desert planet.

Tropes travelling in this convoy:

  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Cannons and railguns deal armor piercing damage, and so do chainsaws and buzzsaws in melee. Plasma weapons have high armor-piercing damage, but are otherwise weak.
  • Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Mobile Command Vehicle, or MCV. It's only really designed to be a Base on Wheels, but with upgrades, it can get equipped with powerful weapons and/or support gear. The fact that it can't maneuver is immaterial: anything that gets in the way of the MCV will be crushed.
  • Betting Minigame: The Lucky Peacock Casino event lets you engage in roulette, wheel of fortune and slot machine minigames. Wheel of Fortune in particular can end up with you earning Heavy/Super Heavy Tier weapons, or even a unique Gold Car.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed. All ranged weapons have a certain magazine size, and will have to reload once they go through it. However, there's no limit to the total number of reloads they can go through, so the ammo is essentially infinite regardless.
  • Chainsaw Good: Vehicles can be outfitted with chainsaws and/or buzzsaws: the former deal more damage to vehicle's "health", but the latter are far more effective at shredding armor.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: Defeated vehicles blow up, and only leave a scorch mark on the ground once the explosion is done.
  • Deflector Shields: Some of the vehicles possess such shields. They have the advantage of regenerating, but will collapse instantly if hit by an EMP attack, and are also ignored by the railguns.
  • The Dragonslayer: "Here be dragons" sidequest has you assist one, who calls himself a Knight of the Order of the Wheel, and actually charges with a lance and shield once you near the supposed dragon's lair. The "dragon" is a laser-equipped raider MCV, one that also has a bunch of allies supporting it. Once you defeat it, the Knight will offer to join you in a vehicle he jury-rigged from the "dragon's" remains.
  • EMP: There are EMP mines and EMP blasters. Both will fully collapse shields, and stun the unshielded targets.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Averted. Be careful not to end up with your own vehicles in each other's line of fire! On the plus side, the enemies can get hurt by each other's attacks as well.
  • Gatling Good: There's a Minigun, and it's one of the most cost-effective weapons.
  • Gold-Colored Superiority: You can unlock a Gold Car if you get lucky at the casino's Wheel of Fortune. It has the highest health of all support vehicles at 1500 HP (although Gila HA still beats it due to possessing much heavier armor) and also has high handling at 80, which is only behind the much more fragile Interceptor and Keeper Drones. However, this is offset by it possessing only a single weapon slot. Some players consider this enough of a drawback to straight-up trade it in as soon as they get it.
  • Life Drain: Leech Drone utility upgrade does this. However, it leeches health not from the enemies, but from your escort vehicles, in order to heal the main one. Meanwhile, repair drones do the opposite.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Light, Medium and Heavy Rocket Artillery weapons amount to this. However, their long reload time and comparatively low accuracy usually puts them in the Awesome, but Impractical category.
  • Magnetic Weapons: There are Medium, Heavy and Super Heavy Railguns. These ignore shields completely, and Super Heavy Railgun in particular does insane per-shot damage, but their long reload time also means they have pretty average DPS: i.e. Medium Railgun is equivalent to Light Pulse Laser in DPS, though it compensates for that with its anti-shield and armor-piercing qualities.
  • More Dakka: There are light, medium and heavy machine guns, and they are the most basic weapons of their tier: effective in conjunction with other weapons, but almost useless on their own. Only the Minigun is a genuinely impressive option.
  • One-Hit Kill: Super Heavy Railgun deals 400 damage per shot, and so frequently amounts to this. Just be aware that the lightest, fastest vehicles also have an automatic 20% chance of dodging its projectiles!
    • Running into a solid obstacle, such as a wall or a mountain, is instant death, no matter how strong the vehicle is. One (dangerous) strategy is to surround a vehicle that you can't damage easily and force it to run into an obstacle, though you run the risk of doing the same yourself.
  • Over Penetration: The beam from Super Heavy Laser will damage everything it passes through.
  • Practical Currency: On Omek Prime, the only currency anyone cares about is scrap metal. You even use it to bet in casinos.
    • However, you can also find bottle caps, and even get side quests that allow you to get even more of them...but they can never get spent on anything.
  • Random Encounter: These will often occur when travelling on the world map.
  • Ray Gun: There are pulse lasers and beam lasers. Both deal good damage to health and shields, but cannot penetrate armor.
  • Ramming Always Works: Any vehicle can ram, though it's not without risks: ramming will damage the vehicle that initiated the ram, and if a lighter vehicle rams a heavier vehicle, the lighter vehicle will pay a stiff price with no real reward. It's possible to create ram-oriented vehicles by equipping them exclusively with chainsaws and buzzsaws, but, conversely, A.I.D. (Advanced Impact Defense) utilities can protect from being rammed (while also protecting from the damaging effects of ramming).
  • Real-Time with Pause: The way the battles work. Tactical pauses let you better aim your MCV's abilities like rockets and Super Heavy Laser.
  • Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Played straight, as the energy shields will eventually regenerate, whereas the armor or health bars won't.
  • Secret Test of Character: Completing a hitchhiker's sidequest and declining a reward gets you Rainbow Car, far more valuable than the "normal" rewards even if you just sell it for scrap straightaway. While its stats are pretty average, the weapons it comes equipped with are random, and so it might possess powerful guns right out of the gate.
  • Shout-Out: The items you need to obtain in order to repair your ship and get off the planet include flux capacitor and sonic screws.
    • One of the random events has you locate a tower that broadcasts the GNU message.
    • There are sidequests to do with collecting bottlecaps: the last one of these even lampshades this with "Presumably, planet Earth has need for bottlecaps... if only you could get there."
    • Another sidequest references the infamous nylon bag debacle from Fallout 76.
    • Also you can encounter a robot wandering through the desert that starts quoting Styx's song Mr. Roboto. If you can match the responses, the robot transforms into a car.
  • Slow Laser: Pulse lasers function in this manner. This makes them inferior to the beam lasers, which function like a laser should, and thus are both slightly more powerful, and also cannot miss.
  • Taking the Bullet: Combats in minefields are exceeding dangerous: because the MCV can't maneuver, if a mine is in its path, your own real recourse is to have an escort vehicle tank the damage for the MCV.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You: The destruction of the MCV instantly ends the game.

Top