Hoodwink is a custom campaign created by RoughRider in 2022.
Mission 1 - “Disobedience”: During the first attempt I lost too many starting units. With just few Marines I couldn’t defend myself properly, and then I lost Stukov. I created a Command Center in the starting base, so I had two there.
I restarted the game and this time I just kept one Command Center in the starting base. It was strange that during this second attempt I got the fog of war of the enemy bases (Share Vision ON/OFF very quickly). I built 26 Bunkers, scattered everywhere, but especially in the borders of enemy bases, with a floating Engineering Bay to see a bit further in the enemy ground and lure enemy units. I’ve barely created Vultures. It was difficult to destroy the Bunkers on the high ground using infantry.
Judging from the layout, this map has been genuinely designed as a space platform.
I spent all my minerals for this mission, destroyed all buildings and killed 949 units LOL. Stukov alone killed 171 units, the same as the Antiga player, as seen in score screen.
Mission 2 - “Hot & Cold”: I’m playing an EUD map for the first time (excluding a map I made some time ago). The AI sent a lot of units through my base during the first minutes, because the starting base is surrounded by the enemy player. I used Wraiths to eliminate most of the enemy Siege Tanks. I kept my two tanks in my base for defense, and repaired them often (these non-replaceable tanks were a good addition).
I liked the use of a non-standard color for the Umojans, consistent with the lore. The Umojans never make an appearance in the original campaigns, so I thought their inclusion in the story made the campaign more interesting.
Since this mission takes place away from Earth I suppose there’s a considerable time gap from mission 1. It was a bit hard to follow the story but I’m understanding it, generally speaking.
Mission 3 - “The Runaways”: I found the expansion really quick and started to extract gas. When I was about to destroy the last remaining buildings from the orange Zerg I realized that I haven’t seen the Cerebrate and thought that the creature died quickly, which seemed strange to me.
Mission 4 - “Hide & Seek”: It was challenging having to confront the three Zerg, all of them with level 2 upgrades from the beginning. But I was able to handle them thanks to the good amount of resources in my starting base. I expanded up and down (the expansion with the geyser first). I built 4 Barracks and 4 Factories (2 Machine Shops) and attacked brown. Orange was close and responded to my attack to brown, making my progress much more difficult. After killing brown I killed orange. I won without attacking red.
Mission 5 - “Fake News”: The blue player gave me a nice extra supply of minerals. Attacking red was hard, but I managed to open a path in the ground by keeping a constant supply of units from my Barracks and Factories. I guess I should use the high ground more. I didn’t realize that I was about to complete the mission by attacking the orange base in the high ground, so I didn’t have a chance to explore the upper right corner before getting victory.
It is uncommon to have four enemy AI’s, and I think since this map is an EUD one, it would benefit a lot from customized AIs (allowing specific use of Zerg units, with restricted tech tree). But then I remembered that it is not quite simple to change the stock AI (it’s almost like modding actually, except creating an executable is unnecessary with EUD).
Mission 6 - “Chain of Command”: At first I thought there would be a timer while having to move the two groups of soldiers simultaneously. But I was actually glad that they are controlled separately, one after the other.
I think the Homing Rocket wouldn’t have exploded to walls, but I haven’t tried to see if that’s the case. Anyways, with a Location covering all the area, and by restricting it only to Mid Air, I’m almost sure it is possible to make a trigger causing effect only on pathable terrain (which means air units that are on lower or higher ground would be out of the Location). Blizzard added that feature because tiles are rhombic while Locations are square.
During the final cutscene I was able to control a white Zergling.
Overall, Hoodwink is pure art. I liked how this campaign have an experimental style, both for the fact of using EUD triggers and the fact that the last mission is an Installation map. There’s a lot of room for a continuation, and the ending kept me intrigued.
Score: 8 out of 10.