Steam Early Access can be a tough place for a small developer. The need to get a revenue stream flowing is vitally important to keeping the lights on and development continuing, but it’s also vital to not put something out there too soon, lest players sour on the experience of a glorified vertical slice that they paid real money for. A lot of developers get it right. Others, not so much. Unfortunately, Raid on Coasts falls deeply into the latter category.
Developed by Tunisian development house Outlaw Wars, who also released Genju Revenge as a mobile title, Raid on Coasts takes a large, fictionalized section of the Middle East, and proposes a scenario where Russia has finally decided that they’re through with American provocations, it’s time for an honest-to-God shooting war. To that end, they’re going to execute an amphibious landing onto this section of coastline and take territory from the pesky Americans.
It’s not a bad concept. The somewhat balanced map harkens back to some of the classic ‘90s RTS games that experimented with balanced Capture The Flag style gameplay modes, something that Z and Z Steel Soldiers did particularly well. The artwork is surprisingly detailed and clean, with tanks and helicopters having some nice little movement animations. It’s the kind of concept which, with some map randomization and a decent enemy AI, could provide an entertaining set of bite-sized RTS gaming moments.
Russia starts with three ships to make an amphibious landing.
Unfortunately, Raid on Coasts lacks those critical features. Based on Steam user reviews, it’s lacked those features since hitting Early Access in August 2017, and given the progress that Outlaw Wars seems to be making, it seems unlikely that it may ever get the features that it needs. The map is the same every time, with fixed town and resource emplacements. It’s also not particularly big, with units able to traverse from one end to the other in just a couple of minutes. Not exactly the “Massive Middle East Themed Land” that the game promises.
That game’s barely there AI doesn’t help much either. Playing the American side, with the AI handling the Russian invasion, resulted in consistent wins even with the AI set on “Impossible”. A basic base rush strategy is all it takes to achieve victory and deny the Russians their Middle Eastern beachhead.
Choose a side and choose your enemy AI difficulty. Not that it matters much.
The outlook is actually worse when playing the Russian side. Thanks to some sort of bug either in the AI or starting map placement, the American side never bothers to take any territory, capture a single base, or even really fight back outside of the prepositioned infantry pillboxes on the beach. All a player needs to do is land his or her Russian troops, capture a town, find the build base icon from the unmarked menu, and wait. A win is guaranteed.
The home carrier for Russian air strikes. It doesn’t look anything like the Admiral Kuznetsov, and neither the Su-34 nor the Su-25 are carrier capable, but those are just irrelevant details, right?
Further technical issues mostly involve the map and UI screens. Some issues are polish things that I wouldn’t expect an early alpha build to have, such as UI tooltips. Others are bigger control issues, for example the inability to issue commands to selected units via the minimap, or the lack of saved unit groups. These were features present in the original Command & Conquer game from 1995, not some radical cutting edge recent development in the RTS space. The main map is at a fixed perspective rather than zoomable, and the UI takes up significantly more room than it needs to for the amount of information that it conveys.
Battle screen where the game actually gets played.
Like a house in desperate need of a full gut and remodel on an HGTV show, Raid on Coasts has some “good bones.” That is to say, there’s a framework of a good idea here, one that might still have potential to blossom into a fun little RTS by the time it gets released from Early Access. In its current state, however, it plays like a rushed concept demo that was pushed out the door to make a few bucks. It may be worth keeping an eye on for future developments, but it’s not something we can in good conscience recommend that anyone pick up in its current state.
