Adapt or Perish

I’m not very good at RTS games, so I don’t spend a lot of time on them. But I love the dev’s other games so I gave this a go.

First, it seems like a new twist as there are no fixed units to start with. You create your units, balancing various types of attack an defense as well as movement. Do you make a lot of cheap, fast attackers, or a few slow, impregnable tanks? Why not some of both, and specialty units to round out your army? (Spoiler: it kicked my a**).

One thing I want to point out is that I played this in VR and this added a lot to the experience. It’s very visceral when you are embedded in a translucent game field, watching enemies attack from your units’ POV. I loved some of the details the dev lavished on the VR experience.

If you are an RTS fan definitely check this title out!

I always wanted to like phr00t's other games but just couldn't get into them for some reason
phr00t has found their calling, this is awesome

Needs a bit of polish visually and in the UI, but, otherwise, this game's mechanics are frickin' golden. Feels amazing to play, got trapped in it for 6 hours today. Awesome spin on an RTS.

Has such potential but its too glitchy so cant fully recommend it yet. The game menus don't always work in full screen is my main frustration.

The AI cheats as it seems to always attack just as My foundation is about to be built, when it does an all out attack it kills healers first or anyone that is building something ready to defend or mine and whenever I mine, even if I haven't seen an enemy for ages it knows where I am and attacks. It seems to always know where I am moving to.
Appears to be more a game of luck than skill at this point.

This would be an amazing multiplayer game trying to defend ourselves against the AI or trying to defeat each other while defending against the AI. Once all the AI bugs are fixed and cant wait to see where it ends up.

Functional Gameplay Customization (Unit Creation), Procedural Generation, and Auto-Adjusting difficulty. The Holy Trinity as realized in a RTS. What a fantastic genre to pick for this combination. Fast-paced action and deep organization are possible in this genre. Still just started, but I see such massive potential already. Started making my dream units right away and trying to make them work together. I think a lot of Starcraft and its unique unit abilities tbh, but I love how all the abilities and stats in this increase the cost and build time. You really have to balance it out.

I absolutely love this game. It is very addicting and is never the same no matter how many times you replay it! From randomly generated maps to a very flexible unit editor, it is a great game. It is more of a sandbox type of game due to there being no definitive story besides just surviving the AI's troops and defeating Overseers. Very great game overall, would recommend for everyone!

My 20+ hours are mostly on a single map, which I only stopped playing after I successfully hit a unit cap. Well, not literally a unit cap, but at some point, even this clever little game can't handle the sheer number of units I produced, and I managed to crash it. I asked for it, though. No question. I was basically ONLY using units that convert enemies into drones, so my unit count was a bit... exponential. I'm not even mad. :)

There are a number of viable strategies, so there's probably some replay value, but you'll have to try not to fall into the same paths you'd used earlier, as there is very little to force you to do anything a particular way.

If you need a game to encourage you, and reward you for following a specific path to "victory", this ain't it. If, however, you like a good sandbox game with thousands of units (as I do), then it's a good time. It's indie as hell, and I love it.

Used to be a good game but a poorly thought out patch, added based on a single thread which had two participants other than the dev, has screwed the balance up. I wouldn't touch it now.

That's how it goes sometimes with small/solo devs. It doesn't take much to get a change added and sometimes that change sucks.

Adapt or Perish: create your very own unique units to progress in an endless strategic battle against procedurally generated AI. Learn, adapt, evolve or perish.

As much as I want to love this game, it is - despite all the features - very shallow. Yes you can select between literally thousands of possibilities for your units, but in the end only a few selections actually matter. I.E. not going for maximum range will always put you as a disadvantage, because out-ranging the enemy is always guaranteeing success.

Several options sound great, but are destroyed by the adapting AI. While it is on the one hand great to see that the AI is not stupidly repeating the same mistake over and over, this also renders certain features completely useless. Cloaking is one of the best examples: the enemy will just equip detectors rendering your cloak useless. Turrets are another example: no matter how many you build and how you build them, eventually they will always be overrun by the endless AI units.

In the end having mobile high-range, high-damage units that turn shredded enemies into resources is the absolute mandatory choice. If those boxes are checked, the game suddenly becomes surprisingly easy, because everything just dies. At this point you realize that the game is a very simplistic "Kill the next boss" system, that contains two forms of enemies: those that die instantaneously and those that you cannot kill because they have damage reflection.

Fun game, but in it's current state there is zero replay value.

Are you ready to witness the ultimate evolution of RTS?

Adapt or Perish delivers.

Don't let the minimalistic presentation fool you, this is very challenging, fun, unique and overall well-made single player RTS.

The game gives you complete freedom in unit design. You can literally create stealth shielded teleporting war harvester carrier of doom if you wish... and good luck winning with that ;) It really made me think about units in an interesting meta way.

You are in a hostile territory and greedy agression/expansion will be punished by dynamic difficulty system. You can forget all you knew about spamming your opponent with superior unit numbers backed by superior economy, because you're never gonna get such unfair advantage in Adapt or Perish. You need to be efficient both in your unit design/composition but also in your actions against the overwhelming enemy. You need to adapt or you will indeed perish.

This one man game is much better than Forged Battalion which was made by C&C veterans at petroglyph.

This game is definitely worth the full price which I paid with no regrets. Buy it and thank me later ;)

Finally it's worth mentioning that Phr00t the game dev is a really great dude, be sure to also check out his other weird and unique games, especially 5089: The Action RPG. You can even bother him personally on discord like I did ;) Support your friendly neighborhood indie devs - I'm doing my part! ;)

Unique RTS game that values and encourages strategic thinking and planning over frantic and precise mouse clicking. It's kinda like an RTS puzzle game and it's awesome!

Gushes
- Devising custom units and strategies is easy and very rewarding. Creativity flows!
- Pausing and timescale control allows for breaks in the action and time to strategize.
- Graphics, while procedural and simple, are well suited to filling in the blanks with imagination (think ASCII roguelike graphics) while still conveying important information.
- Interface is clean and easy to understand.
- Watching and hearing the AI react to your actions is a joy.
- Music is cute and bouncy!
- The developer is a really nice guy! Wink wink

Gripes
- While inspecting an enemy unit is as easy as double clicking on it, the only way to view a friendly unit's resistances/abilities/stats is to navigate through the unit dictionary interface. A hotkey, or being able to double click on a friendly unit's name would hasten this process greatly.
- The colors of friendly units' names and identifiers change as more friendly unit types are built or as friendly unit types are destroyed. While the generated colors provide contrast, it's very jarring when all of your unit identifiers suddenly change color. An option to lock units into colors or set defined colors of units during creation would be greatly appreciated!
- Numbers in unit names are ignored in unit identifiers.
- The game guide is only available on the main menu.
- The game guide does not go over hotkeys. They are shown in protip messages, but these are easy to miss.
- Cannot bind Locations to keys. Being able to bind a location to unused keyboard keys or numbers would be awesome!

Do not let these gripes dissuade you from buying this game! Adapt or Perish is fresh, unique, and very enjoyable! Definitely worth playing and definitely worth supporting the awesome developer, Phr00t!

Score
10/10 would create a spreadsheet for the singular purpose of efficiently naming and labeling my units again

Interesting thought provoking game. It really demands creativity before any level of success can be had. Definitely pushing the rts genre in a new direction. Will write more once I have more hours into it.

Overall an excellent game, and the central features of "no unit cap", "endless world" and "totally customizable factions" are exactly as promised and having them all working together at once -- running fast, with a huge active area -- is very impressive from a technical perspective. Lots of hours of fun to be had learning to balance the unit creation system, which allows for you recreate the functionality of most of the unit types of the iconic RTSes. Eventually dominant strategies will become fairly apparent and you'll be leading the overseers by the nose, but like phr00t's other awesome titles the real fun lies in experimenting with the game's dynamic systems and finding new way to poke at the procedural world. Highly recommended for fans of alternative RTS!

This game is awsome, but super hard. I have been into RTS sense starcraft 1 was released. I have no hope of "winning". It feels like the first proper RTS + Sandbox in that you can build anything you want in unites. Not to mention everything is funner in VR.

Adapt or Perish has that addictive game play that people also find in games like Factorio for the same reason. I've already put in over 50 hours and i'm still learning new things i can do............then fix them to make them better......then fix them.

This game lets you be strategic not just on the field but in the DNA engineering department as well. Other RTS games have a fixed set of assets to use that use attributes others have decided for you are useful but not in Adapt or Perish.

This game lets you really get into the true strategy of war and tactics by letting you create units, buildings and more real time in game match so you can design dynamically if you lack something you need. You can push your designs to their limits and see if they have what it takes to keep you alive and searching for Overseers. The farther you push out the harder it gets so using tactics come into play constantly and pushes your abilities to hone a better faction.

Playing the game it feels a lot like back in the day playing Total Annihilation (that may be due to how i'm building the current faction i'm using, i also plan on making a mobile command style faction like Kane etc. to see how it works out) although its not really an early game "rush" type of game, it can be if your good enough. Overseers don't like it and usually better to have defenses going up in the early game or your going to get crushed once you make them mad.

The AI is better than a lot of games that have been around for a while now and has a style of its own. Sometimes the AI almost has character, it will make you laugh, surprise you, it WILL tick you off with their dynamic tactics and designs, they can be challenging and make you think as well as wish....as in "i wish i did that before....." and "i wish i didn't ...."

There is a turn-based tactical game quality to the game when pushing outward in search of prey. The unique maps you generate hold their own topographical challenges and once again your tactics need to Adapt or Perish.

Multiplayer and more DNA options would be EPIC, more list and namespace supports would be sweet also and a few other things but over all this is a solid classic RTS style game that will get endless playtime and a must for RTS fan libraries.

Finally, a good RTS for VR! The ability to create custom units is a fresh idea that has been implemented perfectly in this game. It adds an enjoyable new twist to the usual RTS play style. It also ticks all the boxes for a good RTS like, challenging adaptive AI and the ability to create huge armies ( No build cap !!! ) , Endless maps and small side missions like saving a captured friendly unit from behind enemy lines.
Being able to quit at any time and come back exactly where you left things is great and you can also pause the action in game if you feel the need.
All in all i would say this is an amazing RTS game that ticks all the boxes and more. At this price point it's a must have.

So far i have really enjoyed Adapt or Perish. Its a unique style of RTS i wish there was more of, the only thing i could compare it to is warzone2100. The ability to design your units and adapt them to the situation as needed is great, the AI seems to utilize this well. I have found several times if i spam a lot of one unit, the AI will employ a counter to that, forcing you to think on your feet. Out of all of Phr00t's games, i would say this is quickly becoming my favourite.

So i like rts games in vr and ive played since command and conquer days. This game however i almost ignored, but im glad that i didnt. Heres why.
So i load up the game and think ewww.... I dont like the text its attrocious. Let me be clear im playing in vr, so whats a small graphic thing is a biggg graphic thing in vr. Anyways i say eww. Then i check the options and wouldnt ya know there a bunch of different menu sets to change to. Ok found one i like... Cool, nice option. Another option says tuants and i click..... And it taunts me. It said something like ohh is what im saying hurting your ears. What! So i turn tuants back on and say talk your shit well settle this in the gridbased warzone. From then on im hooked. The units are supposed to be basically morphed species things and the fact you control what the do down to the number is really cool. Like i made a tank healer that cost a crapton of resource and then a weak scout with a blink teleport ability and stealth. Then the enemy sees my stealthed unit with a unit designed speciffically to find stealth units. And he taunts me about how he sees it. At this point im furious and going to mess his shit up. Nope he destroyed me and i found out that the name is apt to the game. Its like the enemy responds to your attacks and threat level by increasing or decreasing thiers
So the next game i hide and build a big(it was small for this game, becuse you can make as many units as you want, and weaker units are smaller and turrets are based on what you want them to do.) All in all for the price i reccomend it if it looks interesting to you. Theres much more to it does have downsides.(graphic design?) But most games do. As far as gameplay its solid and vr doesnt have many rts. Especially ones like this that dump everything you know about rts on its head. Devs first game i didnt care for but this one i feel was right up my alley.

Make anything you want, then watch it blow up the enemy, or get blown up, whichever happens first.

This is a unique twist on the RTS genre, where the game is entirey singleplayer against an omnipresent AI in an infinite open world, with a focus on adapting to the situiation and optimizing your strategy in order to make it to the leaderboards. There are lots of options for customizing your units and structures, providing a huge variety of possible units.
It borrows pinch of elements from the sandbox genre (infinite procedurally generated maps) and RPG genre (the ability to "level up" your army globally to take on the increasingly strong enemy), although they are both a bit simplistic, just to make the game's concept work.
It is both fun and very challenging. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a unique RTS experience.

"Oh hey, what if I tried doing this" rinse and repeat and now have a list of units to chose from because I kept finding holes in my current catalogue, thousands of wasted resources, and several hours clocked in on the first day I got this game.

Seriously though, the ability to go from huge, cheap swarms, to weird flower towers that explode huge sections of the map is a joy