Hey everyone, it’s Pawel Miechowski from 11 bit studios, here. Back in 2012, I had the pleasure of sharing information on Anomaly Warzone Earth. Today, I want to talk about the award-winning sequel to one of the world’s first “tower offense” games – Anomaly 2 – which is coming soon to PS4.
If you’ve played our first installment of the Anomaly series before, you know what’s up. If you’re new, please let me explain what Anomaly is all about, including some of its features. Anomaly Warzone Earth was one of the first tactical, reversed tower defense games in the world, where you didn’t control the towers (aliens), but rather the attackers (human forces) and defended Earth.
In Anomaly 2, the story continues right after the invasion of Earth in 2018. Our planet is controlled by the aliens, and humankind is almost extinct. Those who managed to survive are grouped in convoys. Your convoy is called Yukon.
In AWE’s sequel, you’re again playing as Commander, controlling him on the battlefield and supporting the units in your convoy with four special abilities which you deploy during missions. The very first abillity available to you is Repair, which is basically an area of effect healing. Next we have Decoy — an ability that baits aliens’ towers to attack the decoy and not the troops.
The third skill in your arsenal is an EMP, which briefly stuns towers which will not activate again if not attacked. Last but not least is AIM, a skill that doubles the damage of your troops; it’s used to destroy high-priority targets.
On top of that, Commander can morph his units. There are five different unit classes (and every class can be upgraded), each having two morphing modes which opens up a lot of tactical opportunities for players. For example, Rocket Hammer, which has the highest damage of all units in the convoy and has a 360 degree view, can be morphed into Sledge Hammer, which has a higher range, but cannot attack units on its sides with only a 30 degree, forward-firing arc.
You may remember the tactical view we created in AWE. It allowed players to set the path for their units. We’ve decided to continue this perspective in Anomaly 2. Players are also able to mix units’ orders on their path to make more strategical decisions and have a better chance at defeating the invaders.
We’ve also added a multiplayer mode where opponents choose sides, either aliens or humans, and square off to see who’s the best on the block. Multiplayer is a mix of regular tower defense play in which one of the players controls towers, upgrades them, and uses their abilities, while the other plays much in the way you do during single-player missions. Multiplayer mode offers a tech-tree to develop unique strategies. And keep in mind that multiplayer mode’s pace is faster than in single-player!
With all the improvements we’ve made in Anomaly 2, we aim to make it the ultimate tower offense game. Players have access to a prelude and 14 missions, which in total provides several hours of fun. Plus, the visual design is just beautiful; a brilliantly-rendered world and improved graphical engine.
The music has once again been created by Piotr Musial, who made the soundtrack for Anomaly Warzone Earth, too. If you’re a game music fan, we’ve shared all of our OSTs with the public. They can be downloaded here.
We will share more information with you soon. Join us on Facebook and Twitter. Also, if you have any questions, please post them below — I’m here to answer them.
