Full-blown RTS ‘Warfare Incorporated’ now available on the iPhone

Back in mid September, Spiffcode announced their RTS game, Warfare Incorporated ($4.99), for the iPhone and iPod touch. Back then Warfare Incorporated was the most promising RTS game, this still holds true today.

The only other notable RTS game to hit the App Store was Strategic Assault, which didn’t really deliver the RTS experience I had hoped for.

Warfare Incorporated shares many similarities with Command and Conquer, this should make fans of the CnC series happy. Like the CnC series, you start out with a mobile construction vehicle, once deployed, it becomes stationary and ready to construct buildings. There is also power plants, which allow you to build additional buildings and defenses. The resource gathering is very much the same, mineral fields are harvested by trucks and transported back to be processed. Even the sound of building construction is the same.

Playing a RTS game was never really possible on portable consoles, actually that goes for all consoles. The main problem has always been controls, gamepads never have and never will be good enough for RTS games. I’ve tried my fair share of RTS games on consoles and all have been down right horrible, I felt like I was operating a crane. I’ve always said, nothing beats the precision a mouse offers in RTS gaming, until Warfare Incorporated proved to me otherwise.

The controls are well optimized for the iPhone’s touchscreen. Much like a mouse pointer, you simply tap on the unit or building you wish to control. You can even create a drag box around a group of units to select them all at once by tapping with two fingers on the screen. You can adjust your drag box by making a smaller or larger gap between your fingers and even rotate the box as well.

Once you have your units selected you can attack enemy units by tapping on them or move them by tapping on the ground. The mini-map located at the bottom right of the screen allows you to move your units across the map easily. First select all your units with a drag box, then tap on the mini-map to change your view to the destination and tap on the ground and you’re all set.

What I love about Warfare Incorporated is the user generated content, Spiffcode has provided players with a full mission editor, so you can create and publish your own missions, it’ll be great to see what players come up with.

Spiffcode currently has multiplayer in the works for Warfare Incorporated, it’s still in BETA but it shouldn’t be much longer until we see this feature added to the game through an update. Scott Lu of Spiffcode, was kind enough to leave a comment at OSX Reality back in September to clarify some details about multiplayer, it will indeed support multiplayer over Internet on Wi-Fi as well as EDGE/3G, so we’ll be able to play a good match basically anywhere.

Multiplayer will allow up to 4 players, so 2v2 matches aren’t out of the question .