Baldies Download (1996 Strategy Game)

An action-oriented strategy game in which you take control of sadistic (yet cute) little characters, Baldies invites you to wipe out the enemy Hairies and achieve total domination of the game world. Gameplay is centered mainly on resource management. Players must assign their Baldies the roles of Scientist, Soldier, Worker, or Builder, each performing a vital function.

Balance is the underlying theme of the game, as you must be able to defend your holdings while steadily advancing and overtaking enemy positions. In addition to standard hand-to-hand combat, you can employ various odd devices to demolish those pesky Hairies. Scientists provide all sorts of goodies that allow you to turn roving animals into weapons of destruction, or rain fire upon your enemies.

The premise of Baldies is similar to many real-time strategy games. You start with a limited number of Baldies with which you construct buildings, increase your population, and create the necessary instruments of war. There are four classes of Baldies--builders, scientists, soldiers, and workers/breeders. Structures include small, medium, large, and huge houses as well as science labs and barracks. Each building has specific properties that assist in your destruction of the enemy.

Are you ready to be a "God" in a world full of tiny little people without hair? If your answer is "yes", then step forward and test your godly skills in this weird game called Baldies.

Your goal is simple: just lead the little bald people against their "mean" arch-enemies, the hairys. With you deciding their fate, they will fight a nearly endless war which can only result in the total annihilation of one race. The game takes place over a very wide range of levels over several types of terrain, from grassland to volcanic. There, you will breed your baldies in order to raise their population to number large enough to allow them to overpower their enemies.

The concept of the game reminds me of an "ant farm", mainly because they are organized in classes and depending on their class, they will perform different tasks. The classes are: workers, builders, soldiers or scientists. Inside a house, workers will breed, builders will upgrade and maintain the house, soldiers will build ammunitions and scientists will research technologies to help them fight their opponents. Outside, workers will gather workforce, needed to perform special works like digging moats; builders will gather build-force, which allow them to upgrade or create new houses; soldiers will use ammunitions to kill the hairy's; and finally, scientists will deliver new inventions like land mines.

Controls are easy as they relay on the mouse to move the pointer around and click over the icons on the screen. There are four icons to allow you to assign each baldie to one of the four classes. The other two icons are a flag, which you can place where you want to build a new house and a hand with which you can pick any baldie and drag him wherever you want.

You can also click on houses or trees belonging to your party. That will "open" the house or the tree and will show you what its occupants are doing. In trees, baldies will not produce anything; a tree is a bonus to the baldies because it will boast their motivation and agility.

When you have built three houses and have enough workforce, a new icon representing a shovel will appear, allowing you to change terrain. When you have four houses, the last icon will appear, the one called "gold-wings"; this one is a very useful tool because it will allow you to select a group of baldies which will receive wings and select a target where these winged guys will land. It can be used to send a large group of soldiers to an enemy house in order to destroy it or take it to your side.

Graphics are displayed in 256 colour mode with a 640x480 resolution. The effects such as rain and the cloud shadows are pleasant and a welcome addition. Sounds are not the most precious thing in this game, but they serve their purpose.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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