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If you love deep thinking, strategy and logistics, you may just love this game. If you want a zergling rush, steer clear.

For a long time, I have yearned for a part-time game. In my endless search for entertainment, I sometimes wish to do many things at once; listen to music, browse the internet and play a game. Finding a decent game where you aren’t 100% engaged at all times can be difficult, however. Previously online poker has filled this void. Now Time of Defiance has taken its place.


Time of Defiance (ToD) is an online massively multiplayer real-time strategy game. It’s like a regular RTS game, except the world is semi-persistent (games last about 2 weeks) and you are competing with many players at once. I say ToD is a part-time game because the pace can be quite slow.

Building some units can take more than an hour. Moving a vehicle to the other side of your empire can take even longer. For this reason, it is possible to play the game while doing other things. Set your transports moving and your constructors…constructing, and you are free to resume monitoring your favourite internet forum.

How long it takes to get things moving is completely up to the player. Are you a casual player, with only 30 minutes per day to spend on the game? Keep your empire small and tight. Are you a school student on holidays, with nothing else to do? Expand your empire and be prepared to spend hours managing complicated trade routes and military conflicts.

The story goes something like this. The core of the continent ‘Nespanona’ collapsed into a dense ball, shattering the crust into thousands of small islands, full of resources and ready to be colonised. How convenient. Your goal of course, is to conquer these islands and build an empire on this fragmented field. To do this you will need resources.

Wood, metal, coal, stone, water and moss are all able to be mined from the islands. These are used to construct buildings, defences, transport vehicles and military vehicles. Transport is vital to your success, because each island is individually blessed with a certain amount of each resource. Some islands contain a bit of everything, while others have one or two main resources and lack the rest.

So you will find that shipping certain resources from one place to another becomes a big part of the game. Fortunately this is more challenging than it sounds, as your transport vehicles require fuel (coal or moss) to get from one place to another. So you may need to transport coal from one island to another, just so that a second transport can get to another island with its cargo.

These ongoing chains of transport are logistically challenging, and quite fun for strategy fans. Protecting your islands is achieved by building turrets on your islands and making warships (for both defence and offence). Keeping your constructors working is what drives the need for transport chains, which are also constantly shifting due to islands running out of resources.

For example, you might have a vehicle constructor on an island rich in metal, but with little wood and no stone. At first you must import stone to the island, but when the wood runs out, this must be imported also. If you neglect to implement the second trade route, the constructor will grind to a halt.

Combat can be simple or complicated depending on the island you’re attacking or defending. I tried to attack a heavily fortified island with brute force; as many large warships as I could muster.

I sent them in all at once, but not before launching an inter-island ballistic missile (IIBM), which was designed to weaken their defences before my ships arrived. The attack failed, because my strategy was weak. The defence turrets took down the IIBM before it reached the island, and their shields (powered by water) resisted my warships. I was defeated.

What I should have done was time my attack differently. I should have sent in decoy ships to draw their fire away from the IIBMs, which would then have flown in and weakened or destroyed the turrets. Then my warships could have come in and cleaned up.

I also made the mistake of grouping different types of warship together in the first run. Smaller warships can travel faster, so they arrived at the island first, and were easily picked off before my larger ships could get there. So while combat can be a simple, I-have-more-ships-than-you-so-I-win affair, it can also have a lot of depth.

Two races are featured in ToD, the Cog (regular buildings and ships, using most resources) and the Shadoo. Metal, moss and water are the main ingredients of Shadoo units, which work slightly differently. Shadoo vehicles use moss as their fuel, and water for shields.

They also have some very powerful weapons. You can utilise both races at once in ToD, by buying a Shadoo Coloniser from the Eight House (a sort of neutral shop, which sells fully built units in return for moss or water. Once the coloniser sets down on the island of your choice, you can begin building a full Shadoo base.

Now you might be wondering why I have only mentioned gameplay so far. In truth, I almost forgot about the graphics and sound. Graphics are very basic, with low resolution textures and rudimentary special effects. While it might be nice to have some eye candy, the game doesn’t really need it. I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

You only require an 800Mhz processor to run ToD, with 256mb RAM and a 16MB graphics card. You could play the game almost anywhere. I say this because the game client weighs in at just 19 megs. That’s right. They could almost put it on floppy disks if they wanted. Sounds are functional but not stunning, and I don’t remember hearing any music in-game. I play my own music anyway.

Buying the boxed retail copy is not really needed since the manual, while quite helpful, is superseded by FAQs on the website, which I found more useful. I also quickly found customer support in-game, without even looking. I was invited to an in-game chat room, where someone from customer support was waiting to answer any questions. I also found the other players quite friendly and helpful, though one player pulled a treacherous move on me, which I won’t go into.

Make no mistake, gamers who crave the fast-paced intensity of traditional RTS games will be disappointed here. The learning curve can be steep, and in a week of play I only experienced one major skirmish. But I was conservative and more aggressive players could certainly find their way into mischief. If you love deep thinking, strategy and logistics, you may just love this game. If you want a zergling rush, steer clear.

You can download ToD from nicelycrafted.com and have an 8 day free demo, while you make up your mind. After that it will cost ₤5 per month, up to ₤40 for an annual subscription.


Review by Gavin Manley.