Game: Food Chain

Reviewed by: Kirk Hiner

I've been a fan of Godzilla since I first saw the King of the Monsters on "Superhost" one Saturday morning. I have dubs of all of the series one movies, and I own subtitled copies of the series two movies, from "Godzilla 1984" right up to "Godzilla vs. Destroyer." I even own a subtitled version of the 1954 original--- Japanese version, of course (which I still argue is one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made). It's another childhood fascination I never outgrew, so I was really geared up when I found that Tri-Star was making a big budget Godzilla movie. But, like everyone else with the slightest amount of respect for science fiction and cinema in general, I was so sickened by the American Godzilla movie that I had to watch the laughably awful "Godzilla vs. Megalon" just to calm my stomach.

What's this have to do with Macintosh games? Only this point: Despite what Devlin and Emmerich wanted us to believe, size doesn't matter.

Over the past couple of months, I've reviewed massive, epic games that have revolutionized and revitalized the Macintosh gaming industry. Titles such as "Unreal," "Tomb Raider II" and "Redjack: Revenge of the Brethren" have proven to the PC gaming world that we can not only run their games, but that we can quite often run them better. The problem with this is that PC users have long been used to buying the extra RAM and PCI cards needed to support these games. In order to get equal ports, Mac users are now forced to also lay down the dollars for these add-ons. So what do you do if you haven't got the money or have an older Mac that can't handle the upgrades? Simple. You play "Food Chain."

"Food Chain" is the first title released by Cajun Games, and it's an impressive start. A somewhat bizarre cross between chess and othello, "Food Chain" nails the two main requirements of games of this size, it's easy to learn and addictive to play.

Here's the gist of it. You start with a game board divided into twenty-five squares. On this board are eight creatures: two seaosaurs, hovenboofs, yug yugs and magmaraptors. With each turn, you're given another one of these four species to place on the board. Each species survives by eating one of the others. Seaosaurs eat hovenboofs, hovenboofs eat yug yugs, yug yugs eat magmaraptors and magmaraptors eat seaosaurs. Hence the title "Food Chain."

Aside from dietary habits, each species also has its own special abilities. The seaosaur can survive in water, the hovenboof can graze on the grass that grows after a creature dies, the yug yug can eat its own kind (I'd never before considered cannibalism to be a "special ability," but it has been a pretty weird decade) and the magmaraptor can fly across the board to dine on its prey (all other species must be both standing next to and facing their prey to eat it, but you are occassionally given the option to turn creatures that are already on the game board). The goal of the game is to keep the separate species eating without allowing any of them to become extinct. If the yug yugs, for example, are either all eaten up or die of starvation, the game ends.

Sound simple? Don't get cocky. You also need to manage the land itself. Sometime's you're given a cloud to place on the board which creates a lake. Only the seaosaur can survive in water, so no other species may be placed in the lake. If the lake is placed over a creature already on the screen, that creature drowns. When a creature dies of starvation, grass grows in its place. If a hovenboof doesn't eat this in time, the grass grows into a tree. Trees never die, and no other species may be placed over a tree. The more trees you have, the fewer playable spaces you have, the better chance the game will end due to overpopulation. And then there's the Grim Reaper, whom you can only place over a creature already on the game board. That creature immediately dies and grass grows in its place.

The tricky part is getting as many of the creatures to as possible eat in one turn. To eat a hovenboof, for example, the seaosaur must move into its square. If a magmaraptor is next to and facing the hovenboofs square, it'll move there to eat the seausaur. If a yug yug was also next to and facing that square, it'll then move in to eat the magmaraptor. Setting up big chains like this not only yields more points, but it also provides you with bonus picks. If you don't like the creature that the computer gives you on a certain turn, you can use an awarded pick to change to any other creature in the chain. You can even chose which direction they'll face or opt instead to turn a creature already on the game board. However, it's best to save the picks for dire emergencies or for setting up another big chain feast.

The simple sound effects and cartoon animations in "Food Chain" are colorful and fun. The music, however, is what really helps the game stand out. It's jungle beat manages to be lively without drawing attention away from the game, and it never feels repetitive like the music in most other games of this calliber.

Perhaps one of the strongest benefits of "Food Chain" is its minimum system requirements. Because it takes only 5MB RAM to run and uses hardly any system resources, it's a perfect way to kill some time while you're printing that 5x7 300dpi TIFF or downloading the 40MB "Myth II" demo. Plus, to make things a little more interesting, Cajun Games occasionally sponsors a high score contest; the winners of the last one received "Food Chain" t-shirts and sizable gift certificates to MacZone.

"Food Chain" is available for download from Cajun's website, or you can chose to order the CD for only a few dollars more. If you're into shareware games, the CD is probably the better choice as it comes with twenty-nine other shareware titles from other companies, albeit most of them only demos.

Will "Food Chain" take the place of "Myth" in your computer game hall of fame? Probably not, but that's not what it's trying to do. "Food Chain" is for the times when you'd rather watch A&E than MTV, when you'd rather drink tea than Jolt, when you'd rather listen to John Denver than KISS (come on, you know you'd sometimes rather hear "Grandma's Feather Bed" than "Lick it Up"). It's also for those of us who still think that G3 is code for the defense condition in which a visual sighting of Godzilla has occurred.

Hey, there's an idea for Devlin and Emmerich; "Godzilla vs. Mechahovenboof." It couldn't be worse than any of their other movies. Could it?

Genre: Strategy-board game

Platform: MacOS

Format: Shareware/CD

Developer: Cajun Games

Publisher: Cajun Games

Requirements: 68040 processor running MacOS 7.1.2, 5MB RAM, 9MB hard disk space

Network feature: No

3Dfx Support: No

Retail price: $9.95 shareware/$13.49 CD

Availability: Out now

Raised on Intellivision and "Tron," Kirk Hiner has been an avid gamer ever since he was tall enough to look through the viewfinder on the Battlezone upright. Although he makes a living using a PC (not by choice) to design websites for Dynamics Online, Inc., Kirk never strays from his 9600/200 or 3400c for computer gaming. When he's not playing the latest Logicware release, he can either be found working on his next "never to be published" novel, rereading anything by Kurt Vonnegut or watching RAW is WAR.

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December 02, 2008