(2004)
By Elixir Studios


First look
Although it may come across as an RTS of sorts, and well, I suppose it is, it's not exactly quite that: It's more of a stat-wrestle. With evil minions... And lasers.

Its art direction is incredibly simple, taking on the look of all those comics about super-agents overcoming rediculous odds and eventually escaping and blowing everything up after being dangled over a shark tank. Let's just hope that doesn't happen since it's you trying to dangle the agent over the shark tank.

Everything's incredibly blocky, disproportioned and boldly coloured but it works, because that's how it wants to look, and it does a damn good job of it.

You begin your evil plans stood inside a small bunker, just yourself, one henchman, a few minions (Yes, there is a HUGE difference in the game between a henchman and a minion, I'll go over that later), a pile of gold bars and a rack covered in briefcases: You use these to build.




Gameplay
Like I previously said, you start with a pile of gold, briefcases, a few poor souls who'll devote their lives to pleasing your every whim... And a mountain.

You'll learn to love this mountain, since it's going to be your new evil home of evil plans.

When you give a build order to make a corridor or barracks inside this new mountain of yours, your worker minions will march off, grab a briefcase, exchange that for some building materials (Mainly dynamite, hoorah for being evil) and begin blasting away at the rock to build whatever you want, it gradually turns into a large, angular cave, then a building site and whatever room you requested. You're drip-fed missions, all of which you're going to need to complete to continue, there's no picking and chosing between them, completing them will unlock and award you with new schematics for rooms, objects and other evil plans, and perhaps a do-gooder agent or two sneaking around trying to get evidence of your evil-ness.

This brings us to one of my favourite parts of the game, the traps.
These can only be build outside or in coridoors.
To build a trap, you'll have to build atleast two things, a sensor, and something painful. These painful things range from simple flaming pits, to beehives and gas chambers. If some pesky agent (or soldier) comes along, steps on or into the sensor area, the trap will flicker to life and do the best it can to repel the invaders




Now... The difference between minion and henchmen.

Minions are expendable.
Henchmen aren't.


There are several different types of minions, who go along one of three paths. These paths are soldier, scientist and diplomats. The roles of the first two are quite obvious, the former however, will devote his life to trickery, weakening the mind of intruders to make them believe all is well, and quite possibly to make them forget what they've seen. This also makes them more prone to traps.

Every unit has five statistics displaying their current well-being, these are:

• Vitality
• Loyalty
• Smarts
• Awareness and
• Endurance

When vitality drops too low, they die. Loyalty, they break free of your oppressive shackles and flee. Smarts, they stand around dumbfounded scratching their heads, forgetting everything they've previously done. Awareness, they become more prone to traps. Finally endurance, they fall over paralyzed untill someone helps them out... Or stuffs them into a holding cell.



Ahh... Holding cells. A simple pleasure for all but who's trapped inside. Seeing that poor soul being stuck for life, until ofcourse you have him escourted to be tortured and interrogated. The first interrogation/torture device you are given is the interrogation chair, their simple sat down, spun around and slapped around untill they spill their secrets. And guts.
Doing this is how you get new types of minions, if you capture and interrogate a maid, you'll earn access to the Valet minion (First of the diplomat line), capture a guard and you'll get access to... Guards (First of the soldier line), I'm sure you see where this is going. (There's four minions along each profession line, all of which stem from the Worker, the first and most simple minion, also the only one who's capable of building.)

Henchmen on the other hand, you start off with only one of these, an all-round killing machine, very handy to have around your evil base when your minions are off stealing from orphans and the good-hearted (or stealing lasers).

When you complete a mission, you earn Infamy, as this gets higher an higher, there's a few jobs on the world map you might want to pay attention to. The reason for this is that they'll give you extra Henchmen.

Let's not accept the illusion that this makes you invincible to intrusion, though.
The forces of good have a few tricks up their sleeves, too. The more Infamy you earn and the more you annoy cirtain factions, the more likely they are to send a Super-Agent to your base. These can be incredibly annoying if handled incorrectly.

They're the only things capable of killing your Henchmen, and they're exactly that: Capable.
They're more than capable of escaping your holding cells, killing your minions and foiling your evil plans. For you see, you can't actually kill them untill you get the mission to do so. Meaning at the point where one invades your base, you're going to have to speed up whatever you're doing if you want to get anywhere.


Plot
You're evil.

You have a mountain.

Things are simpler when you're evil.


Last Note
Pff, SANDbox?! I'm so evil I play in a mountainbox.
Recommendable to anyone who has time to pass and a tendancy to enjoy dipping goverment agents into biochemicals, shark and pirannah tanks and the odd fiery pit of doom.
So yes, this is incredibly 'mountainbox', there's very little in the way of story, there are things to build, things to steal, things to blow up. Hop to!