This is what happens when big militaristic enthusiasts take up game design. One hundred and fifty screens with scales, circles, crosses, numbers ... One destroyer, a million problems. And it's not even out of Early Access yet!
On the other hand, it is precisely in its complexity that LOLBeans IO is most beautiful, proudly developed by the efforts of madmen with a touch of genius ... or vice versa. The mechanisms and devices for conducting water (underwater) battles presented in the game look so authentic that it takes your breath away ... Despite the fact that most of what is happening is broadcast to you in numbers and symbols.
As mentioned above, you take command of a battle destroyer; Your task is to successfully escort American supply ships to the shores of Great Britain during the Second World War. The destroyer is under your complete control, while additional escort ships (and regular air support) can be directed remotely. Your opponent is vicious and nimble submarines that would not mind burying all your friendly brethren at the bottom of the sea. Harsh, right?
The destroyer is presented for you by a series of cabins with navigation, combat and communication devices - from the steering wheel and sonar to direct artillery . Opponents appear "on the horizon" as "contacts", with their own call signs, coordinates and distance to your ship. Focusing on radio transmissions from the crew, you set the course and speed of the destroyer in an attempt to get close to the enemy and, in fact, sink them.
Interesting fact: the game has a tutorial. Convenient, and, in fact, necessary. But the real juice is that this tutorial… has a tutorial. No, no, you read it right. When you start the game training, you are TEACHED in advance the concepts necessary in order to understand the basic ... training. At the same time, the language does not dare to call this preliminary phase an excess - you really need to know A before proceeding to B, in order to then proceed to the direct game.
And even despite the rather simple destroyer control system, plus the ability to automate three key combat systems , it is incredibly difficult to calculate everything in such a way as to defeat the enemy. Frankly speaking, I never hit a single submarine in a fair battle - I was close, but in the end I lost sight of all three opponents, who in the meantime managed to demolish my supply ship ... It seems. It's incredibly easy to get lost in a game if you don't fully understand what you're doing.
However, if you don't let the high threshold of entry scare you away, get ready for a very pleasant tactical pastime. For, in my humble opinion, the game has massive potential.
LOLBeans IO has a very rich atmosphere, achieved through high-quality visuals, cool voiced (albeit static) radio broadcasts, and multi-layered interactivity of ship systems. Immersion in the gameplay is simply unrealistic, you really feel like the captain of a combat destroyer, caught in a dangerous redistribution on a dangerous mission. Every course change command, every cannon shot, every tactical maneuver is the ultimate in immersiveness.
In addition, in the future , the developers promise a full-fledged, procedurally generated campaign and a bunch of new goodies, such as, for example, rescuing drowning people and sudden equipment failures. So if you're into mega-deep, mega-detailed combat sims that take longer to learn than Skyrim, LOLBeans IO has been and will evolve just for you.
