Spellcross
| Spellcross: The Last Battle | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Cauldron HQ |
| Publisher(s) | SCi |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Release date(s) | 1997 |
| Genre(s) | Turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Spellcross: The Last Battle (Spellcross: Ostatnia bitwa in Polish; Spellcross: Poslední bitva in Czech) is a turn-based DOS strategy game for the PC, developed by a slovak company Cauldron HQ and published by SCi in 1997/1998. For a variety of reasons (notably, a relatively nonexistent marketing budget and the emergence of games dominated by the demands of 3D-graphics cards), unfortunately for its designers, the game had little mass appeal, sold poorly, and has remained obscure.
In Spellcross, a contemporary Earth military fights for survival against an extradimensional invasion of orcs, undead, harpies and other fantastical creatures.
The game only features a single-player mode, split into tactical battles and a strategic planning mode. The former is the actual combat, each unit has action points, which can be used to commit actions such as attack or move, or reserved for opportunity fire or movement. Resource and troop management, research, maps, territory acquisition and counter-attacks tie the scenarios together in a rudimentary narrative.
The newer English version differs from the older Czech version. Some graphics and animations have been improved, the mission design has been tweaked and some of them joined. The English version includes a tutorial and cheat codes. The English version has only two difficulty settings, while the Czech version has three.
The story line pits the alliance against the forces of darkness, the game begins with Alexander(you) a colonel in the alliance forces who has become trapped behind enemy lines with a few squads of men, fighting your way through the forces of darkness you meet with the rest of the alliance and are brought to your first mission. The computer plays against you as the gate keepers or under lords who have unleashed a terrible onslaught on the earth torturing and killing many of the population they have conquered in sacrificial magic experiments. The story unfolds that they are attempting to awaken a sleeping titan within the earth’s core.
The forces of darkness use portals and gates to different dimensions to bring hordes of demonic creatures into the world.