WarBreeds

WarBreeds is a Real Time Strategy computer game created by Red Orb and published by Brøderbund. WarBreeds was released in 1998. The game is set in a far off galaxy where the humanoid amphibian race called the Yedda have died out due to famine, disease and civil war, leaving their four former servitor races to fight for supremacy for their planet. WarBreeds features the ability to fully customise the warriors with many types of weapons which provide over 35,000 unique combinations. The central theme and mechanic of the game is genetic engineering.

WarBreeds features skirmishes, a multiplayer mode, and campaigns. WarBreeds has four playable sides, only two of which are playable in campaign mode. As the campaign progresses, another side joins with the player, providing more depth in what they do with their warriors.

WarBreeds provides a different concept on construction of units and buildings as compared with other real time strategy games. WarBreeds allows the player to create many units and structures, but it limits the player on the amount of structures by making them harvest power from spore pods. Although other RTS games use units to gather resources like food, lumber, gold, Vespene gas, Tiberium, etc., resources in WarBreeds are harvested by buildings at a constant rate based on the abundance of resources within a certain radius of those buildings. The player is also limited on how many units they can create.

A major gameplay factor in WarBreeds is the ability to collect DNA from dead enemies, thereby gaining their technologies. Players can gain access to alternate tech trees in some other RTS games, but only Warbreeds makes it a constant, crucial part of gameplay.

There are four playable clans in Warbreeds, each with their own characteristics. Each race has its own variant of Shaman (the builder/tech class used to plant crops and create structures), and then four units. The game's setting establishes that the Tanu, Kelika, and Sen-Soth were created as servitor races to the Yedda, the first sapient inhabitants of the planet Aeolia; then a group of Yedda religious reactionaries tried to create a prophesied holy warrior—the Magha'Re. The Magha, however, proved to be homicidal and ran the Yedda almost to extinction. The three other races quickly adapted to the Yedda technology, revealing themselves to be far more intelligent than their creators had intended, and became viable competition to the Magha, engaging in a four-way war.

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