The Planetoid

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Planetoid is a freeware Real Time Strategy game developed by Metalsoul and hosted by YoYo Games.

The game features the Hominids, a race of creatures who move to a new planet after their home is destroyed by the Planetoid, a large green asteroid that destroys everything in its path. Meanwhile, the Aliens have decided that only they can be in that particular system, so they become the game's villains. The player's task is to help the Hominids to survive while colonizing planets and avoiding extraterrestrial threats.

The Planetoid became a popular game, and eventually developed into a series of three. The third game still in development, although not by Metalsoul. Metalsoul decided not to do the rest of the game partway through, so he handed it off to Elmzran of TastyHamGames. Elmzran then made a Web site about the game, which you can visit here.

Tropes used in The Planetoid include:
  • Ascended Extra: The Zorguls, who didn't do much in the first game, became playable in Planetoid 2.
  • Demonic Spiders: The ice comet monster. It comes in a randomly spawned ice comet that can come at any time, and can kill off several of your buildings and Hominids before dying.
  • Difficulty Levels: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Harder difficulties make the AI colonize faster. Hard starts you off in a blue giant system.
  • Game Breaking Bug: What many people call "The Freeze", the third game had a bug that would cause asteroid collisions to freeze the game. This was later fixed.
  • Earthshattering Kaboom: The Planetoid causes this if it collides with planets.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: The player could choose from a variety of playable characters in Planetoid 2. This grew into a huge mass of playable characters in Planetoid 3.
  • Not Playing Fair with Resources: Elmzran admitted that the AI controlled opponent has unlimited resources.
  • One-Hit Kill: The Planetoid itself is this, to everything except stars.
  • Shout-Out: Some of the races, including Darthcube and Pac-Man.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: In each of the three games, you can fling your people into space.
  • Wide Open Sandbox: Although many people believe the goal to be destroying the other species, what you want to do is up to you.