Perimeter: Geometry of War

A forgotten RTS that is one-of-a-kind, both in its approach to mechanics and in its narrative.

Premise

Perimeter: Geometry of War is a Real-Time Strategy developed by a Russian studio K-D Lab in 2004.

What makes to stand out from other RTS is immediately apparent from its very concept:

• Instead of a town hall, your main building is an entire city. A whole domed megapolis that houses 100'000 people and can fly.
• Terrain is literally your resource. The more territory you control, the faster your energy income is, which is used for everything. And the terrain needs to be flattened to be claimed, which takes time.
• Your resource buildings can raise an energy shield. Activate all at once, and your entire territory is sealed off from attacks. It drains the energy really fast, though.
• Your entire army is composed of nanomachines and units can transform between types in real time depending on the situation.
• Unique plot about spirituality and paranoia.

The game is also a very unique case of the international translation for some reason just not bothering with like... 80% of the dialogues, so almost the entire story is completely cut out.

Mechanics

Like most RTS, the gameplay loop is (usually) fairly straightforward. Develop your economy, build up an army, and crush the enemy base faster than this is done to you. But because your resource is the ground, you don't have to send you workers to collect wood/crystals. Your Core buildings already do that, you place them on the outside of your base to expand it, so getting a lot of terrain early is important.

Your workers are the Brigadier units, every player gets 5 of them. And they can be in only one of two modes: constructing or terraforming. Both of those tasks are done faster the closer the unit is to the target, so being efficient means putting them on the front lines and risking waiting for a replacement if they are attacked. Switching between modes also requires recalling a Brigadier back to the home base. So you have to juggle your priorities and may not have time for it.

You can only build on a flat terrain and the majority of a level is usually not like that, so the players have to flatten it first. The players can also do the opposite and dig trenches, which prevents ground units from getting across until they are flattened again. And there are some units that attack the terrain, causing buildings to take damage and making it unusable for further constructions until the ground is repaired.

There are three base types of units that on their own don't matter, they mainly serve to be merged into more advanced types. Yes, your entire robot army can transform back and forth, so your soldiers are like a material. This is why your next step after the economy is usually to start placing as many barracks as possible and mixing it up with defences. Each advanced unit has one kind of attack that is good against the other, like anti-air or anti-armor, while defensive turret are similar. Each unit type requires having a lab building placed, which can take a while, and can give the opponent an idea what kind of formation you're planning. Each of the three factions also have a unique ultimate unit, effectively a nuke launch, so always keep an eye for that. You can also split your army into squads to cover for each other or try for a pincer maneuver.

Some maps also feature a variety of neutral monsters called Scourge. They look like animals, charge the base in waves, and can only be stopped by building over their nest. So they just constantly harass you and make sure your defenses aren't stretching thing.

The main base can lift off and be moved to another location as the cost of a lot of energy. In theory, it allows supplying energy to barracks faster, but I feel its only practical purpose is allowing to buy time if the terrain below the base is damaged.

The Core buildings can raise the energy shield to repel attacks. Of course, that costs energy, so without enough territory you can't last long. The shield also have an interesting function, as if a Core is close enough to an enemy Core, raising the shield will convert it to your side. This turns just placing buildings an offensive option. Of course, the construction requires the Brigadiers sending energy pellets to the building, so the enemy will just block such attempts if you're no pushy enough.

The campaign missions don't always require you to defeat the enemy. Half of the missions ask you to charge the portal and move through it, while defeating the enemy is treated as a loss instead of an achievement. It gets quite annoying on a later mission where you have to take the portal back from the enemy base, which is already well developed when you start from nothing.

To make it a bit fair to the player, the enemy behavior in campaign missions is preset, so with some trial and error you can deduce what kinds of units and when the enemy sends out.

Story

A long time ago, a prophecy by the people with psychic abilities called Spirits has said that Earth will become completely uninhabitable, so the humanity set off to colonize the hyperspace in search of the Promised Land.

The space itself, now known as the Psychosphere, makes fears manifest and attacks humans like some kind of immune response. Giant spiders, snakes, and screaming faces are trying to breach into the cities and kill everyone in them.

Most worlds also have interesting designs, one looks like a giant pizza. Narratively, it's suggested that the psychosphere shapes the worlds as well

To combat the phobia, the council of Spirits has decided that the natural answer to the human weakness is to start a theocracy, erase history, and unite humans under one order called the Exodus movement. If "the filth" attacks the city, it means it wasn't devoted enough.

You start as the newly cloned commander of the primary Frame city and take charge of the military. While getting a history lesson, however biased, is appreciated, it's apparent that you're just being used to safely move the Frames along the portal network into the unknown. How the Spirits talk to you mix religious and parental abuse, treating humans as misguided children, but up to interpretation. At the same time, you get the sense of purpose and camaraderie, as the Scourge is a constant threat and what is happening to other Frames is unknown.

One Frame colony have said screw Exodus and has declared itself a Mechanical Empire. And the Emperor's solution to the Psychosphere is to genocide own population and replace it with cyborgs, while turning the hyperspace into free real estate. No humans, no monsters, no need to move. But quickly, the Emperor realizes that Spirts are needed to operate the portal network, so he declares war on the Exodus. The way the Emperor talks reminds me of Soviet politicians and is extremely megalomaniac, everything exists for the Emperor's will to expand the Empire and any inefficiency is met by recycling.

Two colonies have said screw Exodus and decided to go the opposite way. The Harkback movement is determined to find a way back to Earth, and they've pretty much realized that the Spirits organizing the Exodus from Earth was a red flag operation to "sterilize" mankind for own needs. They talk like late Soviet intellectuals who talk how everyone should contribute the greater good of humanity as of whole. And Harkback's answer to the Psychosphere is to splice DNA with the Scourge, which results in them turning into the invaders themselves.

If you've thought Exodus are morally gray, their response to the rebellions is of course doubling down on exterminating the unfaithful.

Throughout the game, it becomes apparent that the events are witnessed by a higher-dimensional being who nudges the commanders in certain directions to avoid the self-destruction on humanity, but can only be in one place at a time. Once you get that outside view, your empathy expands to treat three factions going at each other with pity.

The narrative raises a question if spiritual transformation is really an answer to the hardships of the world, and how far can one push themselves until they have nothing in common with who they once were.

In the final mission, the Emperor is destroyed, while the Promised Land turns out to be Earth all along, making the universe not a chain but a loop and Harkback were right all along.

The supplementary material and the sequels

As mentioned, the English release by Codemasters cut out most of the story. I just don't understand why they did that, to make things simpler? All dialogues are shortened, moral grayness is omitted, the nature of the player character is completely skipped, and the final monologue is cut. If you want to experience the true story, I have made a comparison video here

The game includes a collection of short stories that takes place at various points in history from the perspective of humans, including the time when they've left Earth. Some of those may be fanfics by the community or the developers. Or, the Russian version includes them, naturally these aren't translated.

A racing RPG called Vangers was released in 1998. Surprisingly, Vangers is more popular, but what many don't realize is that Perimeter is a sequel to it.

Perimeter: Emperor's Testament works like Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne or Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death. It's effectively a separate game that only differs in levels and some minor gameplay changes. It's also filler and not really relevant to the story. The Emperor creates a cyborg commander for the Frame and experiments with a warp engine, resulting it you being sent into a complete parallel universe and go through other artificial Frames possessed by demons.

Perimeter 2: New Earth is a sequel in name only. It follows the Exodus and the Harkback dueling over the control of the planet, but the plot is basically non-existent. Harkback being changed to an aquatic civilization with the terraforming being sinking the ground below the sea level is visually interesting, but is a big departure from how their portrayal. The shield (you know, the titular Perimeter) and unit management have been dropped away, turning the sequel into just a standard RTS.

The developers of Creeper World claim it's not a spiritual successor. Just looking at them side by side... let's be honest.

Final thoughts

The game provides a unique flavor to both the TRS genre and to Sci-Fi. The levels require you to make quick decisions in rock-paper-scissors matchups and think about how to best approach the base management. The story is very depressive and and inspiring, there just aren't a lot that show the whole humanity changing under pressure into something completely unrecognizable.

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