Baldies

From the Database of Home of the Underdogs

GAME DESIGNER:
GAME DEVELOPER:Creative Edge
GAME PUBLISHER:Panasonic Interactive
Copyright 1995, Creative Edge

Baldies is a fun action/puzzle game featuring follically-challenged “Baldies.” Baldies offers an extended gameplay experience that fuses the elements of Dune 2, Populous, and Lemmings, with over 80 levels, 15 special weapons, and five 3D worlds. Each world has its own special graphics and environmental theme, including ice, grass, desert, and volcano . Hidden areas make the worlds more interesting.

Each level starts with some strucutures and a few of the bald ones. Baldies reproduce into more baldies and they can be divided by the player into proportions of four categories: scientists, workers, builders and soldiers. Like most strategy games following in Dune 2‘s sand prints (pardon the pun), the baldies build structures, mine resources, research upgrades, and fight battles. Like Populous, the little baldies congregate around the shield icon which is placed upon the map. Unlike Populous, the shield icon has a very small sphere of influence requiring much time and patience to move numbers of baldies to the shield location. Another problem is the inability to control individual soldiers which has not been balanced, like populous, to work with the system. Characters can be picked up and moved one at a time, but even when moved to the enemy stronghold they refuse to attack structures or enemy characters. The Baldies simply wander around being cute. This is the most frustrating part of the game— times when you think the level will never finish. Still, the high “cute” factor and many imaginative levels (and technologies you can research) makes Baldies one of the best Lemmings clones on the market. Thumbs up!