Battle for the Allspark

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Battle for the Allspark
Platforms	Online
Release date	2007

Battle for the Allspark was an online free-to-play game (and, surprisingly, non-monetized in any way beyond the sales of the 2007 Transformers retail game) set in the expanded continuity of the 2007 Transformers movie.

In it, the Autobot/Decepticon conflict has broken out worldwide, and hundreds of players engage in 1-on-1 battles in 20 world zones. These zones are designated as "Autobot" or "Decepticon" controlled, depending on each faction's win ratio. Tallied cumulatively, this system will determine which side wins the larger "war". The playable characters were the seven drone units featured in the retail game.

The game was shutdown in April 14, 2009, when the transformersgame.com website was updated to promote the upcoming Revenge of the Fallen video game. A few weeks later, said website would get Battle for the Allspark v2, an all-new (and far more stripped down) sequel based around the enemy units of said game. Both the original Battle for the Allspark and its v2 are now considered lost media, with no online archive of their contents being known to exist and very little footage being available on the net.

Gameplay

The red zones mark Decepticon territory!

Players begin by creating a unique login. They then choose a faction, a player unit, and assign a name to that unit. This account is then connected to that login. From there, players move to a world map which displays the various combat zones. From this screen, players can view how many active units are in each zone, as well as the total win-loss ratio for each zone as well as for the overall game. Once players choose a zone to play in, they move to another screen which shows all the players currently in said zone. From there, players may chat with each other, as well as select a member of the opposing faction to fight.

Combat is turn-based, allowing each player to choose one of several attacks (the number of attacks increases as the player's rank increases), each of which drains a certain amount of the player's energy reserves. Once both players have selected an attack, an initiative roll determines who strikes first. At the beginning of each new round, players regain a certain amount of energy, but if a player's energy reserves are insufficient, the player cannot attack. Combat continues until one player's life reserves have been reduced to zero or until one player exits the game.

Gallery

• 
  The world map with a player's profile open.
• 
  The zone system.
• 
  The battle system.

Ranks

Private — 0-19 wins, 3 attacks
Lieutenant — 20-59 wins, 4 attacks
Captain — 60 - 119 wins, 5 attacks
Major — 120+ wins, 6 attacks

Units

Players can choose among several body types. Though these body types ostensibly belong to one side or the other, the player-characters are generics (possibly drones) that can belong to either affiliation. While they have generally identical body designs, Autobot and Decepticon units have distinct head designs. Autobot-aligned units have a helmet and facemask that vaguely resembles Optimus Prime, while the Decepticon-aligned units have the single-lens design seen in other film-related media.

• Payload
• Swindle
• Mixmaster
• Scrapper
• Dreadwing
• Dropkick
• Longarm

A "Sector Seven unit" was also planned to be part of the character roster at some point, but ultimately ended up being scrapped.

Reception

More than half of all players were over 20 years of age.

By almost any standard, Battle for the Allspark was a resounding success. 6.5 million games were played by almost a million players, with the vast majority of participation taking place after the film hit theaters. Other notable stats include:

• As of May 7th, ~25,000 people had registered and fought ~100,000 battles.
• As of June 2nd, ~65,000 people had registered and fought ~350,000 battles.
• As of Nov 2nd, 2008 ~975,000 people had registered.

The game was apparently abandoned by developers in June 2007 following a survey of the features players would like to see added to the game. Most of those features ended up making their way into AllSpark Wars, the online tie-in for the Nintendo DS game developed by the same group. It received a minor code update on November 21, 2008, the only visible effect of which appeared to be a rendering bug which caused the chatbox to overflow its borders.

External links

• Review for the game (and some of the last remaining footage of its existence)
• Another rare instance of surviving footage, and the source for most of the images in this article