Tread On Who?

Many people may not have heard of this game, or are at least wondering what it is. Tread Marks is an independent creation, meaning somebody living off of Top Ramen managed to churn out a game without the benefit of a large company to help them out. We had a preview of the game sometime last year; we said it looked fairly promising. Promising it was, to the people at IGF (Independent Game Festival). The IGF placed Tread Marks on a list of nine other games that are supposed to be in competition to win considerable amounts of cash, along with tons of recognition.

Intro screen

Boring?

Tread Marks seems to be going with the trends of the gaming industry, namely multiplayer, multiplayer and more multiplayer. The majority of the big games that came out this year depended greatly on this form of play (a la Quake 3/Unreal Tournament), or had at least devoted a significant amount of time to making it a major component. The developers of Tread Marks decided to forgo the story aspect, and make a game that provides a considerable amount of entertainment online. For those of you still reading that haven't heard of the game, two words can sum it up: tanks and racing. If that doesn't pique your interest I don't know what will.

Railorama

I see the light

Story

This has to be the most compelling story line I have ever had the pleasure of reading (note: copious amounts of sarcasm in previous line). The gist of the story is that a bunch of tanks decided to stop wars by playing around in dirt fields. Compelling isn't it? The actual story isn't much longer and contains the words "Hoody Hoo!" I am by no means playing this game for the story, they know it, and I know it, gratefully they decided to embrace that fact. So instead of making up some loony story and doing a bad job of it, they decided to go down the humorous path. Hurrah to them for not trying to make me to swallow some trite plot.