12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull for Linux Review

very good
key review info
  • Game: 12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull
  • Platform: Linux
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: No
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12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull

12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull is described as a strategy game, but that would push the term too far. We could call it mouse-click frenzy, but that would be unfair, so we'll take a closer look at a simple game that managed to remain the top selling game on Steam for a couple of weeks.

When you say Steam, you don't really think of 12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull as the best-selling game, but that's exactly what happened. This interesting title from Zoom Out Games has managed to climb to the top during the Steam Summer Sale, despite having some serious competition, which means not only that a lot of users bought it, but that it was good enough for the word to spread.

12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull is not the first game in the series. That honor is reserved to 12 Labours of Hercules and is followed by 12 Labours of Hercules III: Girl Power. Only the first couple of games have Linux support. The third one hasn't been released on Steam just yet. In any case, it's weird to see only the second game in the top-selling list, so we decided to take a closer look.

Before getting into the gameplay and others aspects of the game, we should talk about the genre, which is difficult. You only use the mouse and you need to make decisions on where to send your people, so it's part strategy. The closest analogy I could think of is like a Farmville single-player game. You click around and gather stuff, only not stuff that you've planted. There are no in-game purchases, just more and more difficult levels.

Story and Gameplay

Well, if you're waiting on a serious storyline, or even a simple story, then you're going to be disappointed. Basically, Hera chased away the Cretan bull and you need to bring it back. It's done a lot of damage, and you'll have to fix everything.

The game is separated into big levels and each level into sublevels. It all comes down to being able to do the task before the time runs out. Each time it's something different, like clearing a path, fighting some minotaurs, retrieving an item, building something, and so on.

You usually start with two workers and you need to gather food and wood for various tasks. Some tasks require food to be completed or raw materials. As you can imagine, these run out pretty fast, but all levels have a couple of places that constantly generate these items. If you're not fast enough to collect them, they get stolen.

There is usually a lot to do and most of the work is done by workers. You'll also have to build farms, which will generate even more resources, but they will also drain you during the construction. It's possible to finish a level without collecting everything, so it's not always a good idea to try that. Most of the time you'll finish just before the timer runs out, and that happens only if you're really quick.

A nice gameplay addition is that you can queue the actions, so you don't always have to watch what's happening. If you want to do something with the workers before they are free, you just click on that item or task, and when a worker is free, he will perform his duty.

This is not a serious game, by any means, but it's still difficult. In fact, it will often be very hard to stay in the allotted time, even if you use the various powers that are granted. To make things even more difficult, you'll have to deal with monsters and gods that attack the workers from time to time, and you need to click quickly on them as they move on the screen.

The fact that it doesn't have any kind of ads, in-game purchases, or any helping hand, influences the difficulty and sometimes it can be very rewarding to finish a level after a few tries.


The Good

  • Addictive gameplay
  • Nice graphics
  • No in-app purchases

The Bad

  • Very difficult levels towards the end
  • Issues with full screen

Conclusion

12 Labours of Hercules II: The Cretan Bull sounds like a terribly boring game on paper, but it's addictive. Its place in the top selling games on Steam might have been influenced by a discount, but that wasn't enough. The graphics feel like they are hand-painted, the animations are nice, and the gameplay itself is different enough from one level to another to keep things interesting.

I don't believe I'm about to say this, but I feel obligated to recommend this game if you want a nice, casual, and fun experience. It's the perfect Sunday afternoon game and I can't wait to get back to it.

story 6
gameplay 8
concept 9
graphics 8
audio 7
multiplayer 0
final rating 8
Editor's review
very good
 
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