Savage Moon Goes Portable In The Hera Campaign

Hello – this is Ana (the producer) from FluffyLogic again (you can read my last blog-post’s for Sony here & here).

We would like to tell you about the latest developments in the Savage Moon universe: the Insectocytes have invaded the PSP!! For the last few months FluffyLogic personnel have been toiling away in an underground bunker to produce the mobile incarnation of the game: Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign – featuring new weapons, new bugs, news maps and new gameplay.

For those new to the game, Savage Moon is a tower defence strategy game which launched on PS3 last winter. The game pits the player (humans), who is trying to mine valuable minerals from sentient asteroids or Imoons, against massive chitinous, armoured bugs called ‘Insectocytes’. As the humans burrow into the ground, the Imoon produces its own auto-immune response in much the same way that the human body produces white-blood cells in response to an infection; this is when the killing starts!

We have seen the humans encounter the Insectocytes before. There has been two explosive campaigns set in deep space in the Shathak sector (the original game) and the Waldgeist nebula (the expansion pack). What we discovered is that the enemy evolves in response to attack – what does not kill them, makes them stronger! They grow resilient and mutate into diverse new forms with each mission and Imoon contested.

The next step is to colonise the PSP with Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign, named with reference to the Aegophagus: the goat eating aspect of the Greek goddess. This huge gathering of Imoons, the Hera Cluster, drifted into human space a few months ago. Preliminary intelligence suggests that it consists of 20 Imoons populated by a rich variety of Insectocyte forms, some of which have been encountered before and some of which are new. An example of a new form is the Drainer – evolved in response to our rapidly advancing military capability, this Insectocyte emits a bio-magnetic pulse-field that temporarily incapacitates any human technology within its range – rendering it vulnerable to rapacious Tank or Stinger Insectocytes. Other forms encountered include the regenerator sub-species that heals any damage it has taken, making them doubly-hard to kill.

But the human military forces have not stood still either. We are going to make new technologies available for the Hera Campaign, with pride of place going to the Sniper Tower – a deadly new combat tower that seeks the most deadly prey within range. We have also separated the blocking towers from the rest of the tower-tech to give the player both drop-pods (that land a new combat or support tower) and block-pods (that land a blocking tower).

In addition you now play as the Supreme Commander of the entire armada. The player controls events for the whole campaign as well as each individual Imoon mission. The player chooses which Imoon to concentrate their resources of drop-pods, block-pods and credits into via the new Tactical Layer interface. Success on a mission results in more resources and the unlocking of new technologies.

Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign brings the best of the action-strategy gameplay from the PS3 onto the PSP. It continues the relentless assaults by very large bugs but re-works the overall strategy, adding key aspects to make the game a truly mobile, gaming experience: