1997 · FRACTiLE Games · Arcade · Artillery

MoleZ

MoleZ is an extremely brutal mole shoot'em up for two to four players on a single computer. You are a mole armed with a wide range of different weapons; from shovel all the way to the rocket launcher and nuclear grenade. Your only purpose is to kill the other moles or at least hurt them as much as possible before you die. The player with most kills wins!

Released: 31 December 1997
Platforms: MS-DOS
Genres: Arcade Artillery Shooter
Developers: FRACTiLE Games
Publishers: FRACTiLE Games
Modes: Multiplayer
Perspective: Side view
Themes: Action

About

Liero is a video game for MS-DOS, first released by Finnish programmer Joosa Riekkinen in 1998. The game has been described as a real-time version of Worms (a turn-based artillery game). Liero [ˈlie̯ro] is Finnish for 'earthworm'. Inspired itself by the earlier game MoleZ, Liero provided inspiration for the later games Soldat and Noita.

Keywords

level editor
freeware
local multiplayer
death match
in-game map editor
destructible environment

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

In Liero, two worms fight each other to death for score (or frags) using a choice of five weapons from a total of 40 in a two-dimensional map. Most of the terrain, except for indestructible rocks, may be dug or destroyed by explosions. In addition to the weaponry, each player has a ninja rope which can be used to move faster through the map. This grappling hook-like device substitutes for jetpacks and can even latch onto the enemy worm to drag them closer to their foe.

While playing, there are health power-ups to heal the player's worm. It is also possible to replace one of the five weapons by picking up bonuses. Before playing, certain weapons can be selected to be available only in bonuses, in the entire game, or completely disabled.

Development

Joosa Riekkinen developed Liero as DOS game with the first version released in 1998. Liero was inspired by the previous freeware game MoleZ, and took many weapons and sounds from its precursor. The original Liero's latest version was 1.33, which was released in 1999. However, the author lost the Pascal source code in a hard disk crash, and due to the lack of backup, no new "classic" versions have been released since.

Despite this, and with the author's approval, the Liero community has distributed several altered (or hacked) versions of the game through the LieroCDC, and others.