Mud and Blood 2

Mud and Blood 2
Developer(s)	Ludovic Leblanc (UrbanProphet)
Version	2.2.8a
Platform(s)	PC, Mac
Release date(s)	August 31, 2008
Genre(s)	Strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player
System requirements Adobe Flash Player

Mud and Blood 2 is a free online flash game developed by Ludovic Leblanc (commonly known as 'Urbanprophet'). Released in 2008, it has been constantly updated ever since. It is a top-down sandbox World War Two RTS simulator set during Operation Luttich in 1944, where the objective is for the player, who controls a small American squad on one side, to hold their ground against infinite waves of Germans coming from the other side by deploying units, which act semi-autonomously, with the player typically only being able to tell them where to move (though some special orders do allow a greater range of player-controlled actions).

The player is able to customize their defense as they see fit, utilizing any from a range of infantry and vehicle units of various types and specialties, terrain cover, defensive emplacements, structures, infantry weapons and radio support, while the enemy side brings to bear an equally varied arsenal, reflecting the highly replayable sandbox design of the game, which is based on a concept termed by players as 'Unfair Random Brutality', after the developer's shortened name—Urb—who, in a testimonial in his website^[1], wrote that:

"Mud and Blood started as a small project to entertain a few co-workers and myself... all soldiers with an addiction for dark humor pertaining to human fragility and the sad fate often attached to this career choice. To illustrate how stupid, fast and cold combat can be. How grotesque friendly fire is and mostly how dysfunctional and toxic fire fight is. We thought it was pretty funny and totally evil. Since I released Mud and Blood Vietnam a few years before, I decided to throw it on the interweb and just wait for a mob of furious casual gamers sporting bubbletank t-shirts to knock on my door. Strangely enough, the game found its niche and since its release in 2008, Mud and Blood 2 went viral and now has a scary total of 16 million plays. MNB2 is hosted on 2,967 web sites. Every day, there are 20,000 Mud and Blood 2 games being played around the world. Despite of its reputation of unfairness and brutality, Mud and Blood 2 is a top ranked flash game and was and still is featured on the front page of many major portals including kongregate.com."

Gameplay

The game is a top-down sandbox strategy game. Everything is controlled using the mouse, though there are keyboard shortcuts for most actions. The overall objective is to not let any Germans (the hostile units) pass through your lines at the bottom of the field. Germans will come from the top in infinite 'waves' of increasing difficulty, with randomly selected troops being deployed based on the current wave. The 'currency' for the game is called 'Tactical Points' (commonly abbreviated to TP), which you can use to do various actions such as call in artillery, deploy more units, build constructions or give certain instructions to your men. Tactical Points are usually gained at a rate of 1 per wave (though for the initial 5 waves they are gained at a rate of 2 per wave) and can be gained through other actions as well. Different options cost different amounts of tactical points; as an example, the action of deploying a 'French Resistance soldier' unit (the weakest in the game) costs 1 TP whereas a tank (one of the most powerful) costs 20 TP.

The game features a number of different internal systems, such as an aiming system (decided by the 'rifle skill' of a unit), a morale system, a ranking system and a system which gives units complete autonomy, with the player only being able to tell them where to move, not what unit to fire on or how fast to get there. It is designed to simulate real combat as far as possible, with randomised damage from explosives and randomised hostile actions.

The range of customisability, with 24 deployable units, 11 orders to give to your men, 9 weapon upgrades, 8 support options and 14 constructions gives a wide set of options to the player, leading to many different strategies being created. The randomness of the game ensures that the strategy needs to be very adaptable, in a similar way to real-life warfare and with the ability to react to the rapid changes in the game which are common thanks to the programming.

The way the loss system is designed stops loss of the game unless the player is being overwhelmed or has a hole in their strategy. The game will end if 10 hostiles cross behind the player's lines or if all the player's units die. The player can also end the game early by surrendering. Statistics are shown at the end of a game and are tallied up to a final score, which is then matched against the worldwide Mud and Blood 2 players leader board served by MochiBot.

The player's overall achievements in the game are tracked in their profile through the issuing of ribbons, which confer various bonuses, and a statistics panel. Based on the overall score at the end of a mission, the player is also awarded experience points and can climb from their initial rank of 2nd Lieutenant to General of the Army, unlocking new 'deployment options', or starting configurations of units and tactical points, at different ranks.

Patches

A patch name: this indicates that it is the first version of the 7th major patch of the 2nd landmark release of the game

Upgrades to the game are known as 'patches'. These contain new features, such as new units or additional functionality, and bug fixes. They come out at irregular intervals. Minor patches are known by alphabetical codes and major ones by numerical. All patches are preceded by a '2', as the game is Mud and Blood 2, then the landmark release number, marking significant game engine and/or gameplay alterations, then major patch number and finally the minor patch letter. For example, the version at the time of writing is known as '2.2.8 a', so it is the first edition of the 8th major patch of the 2nd landmark release. The number of patches released has made the current game very different from older incarnations

Reception

As a measure of its popularity, Mud and Blood 2 has been hosted on over two thousand sites, notably Kongregate^[2], where it has over 6,000,000 views (making it the 10th most played strategy game of all time on that portal)^[3] and by Mochi Media ^[4]. It has received generally high ratings: 4.09/5 on Kongregate and 77/100 on MochiGames.

It has also received good reviews. In a review on Kongregate Collective Guides, Brandon Lugo gave it 4.2/5, summing up that it was 'an awesome game!'^[5], particularly praising the gameplay and audio. On the Flash Game Forums, the administrator gave it a similarly good review, also praising the audio as well as the 'lasting appeal' of it, which demonstrates how effective the game is at not becoming repetitive. ^[6]

External Links

• mudandblood.net, the official Mud and Blood site.
• The Mud and Blood Wiki, a wiki containing almost all the information about MnB2.
• MnB2, Mochi edition, on Mudandblood.net

Notes

1. ^ As seen in the description for the download of MnB2
2. ^ May be found Kongregate here
3. ^ Urbanprophet, Sep. 17, 2010 (link), based on this
4. ^ May be found here
5. ^ Kongregate Collective Guides [1]
6. ^ In a review here