Cannon Fodder

The player is in charge of a squad of between one and eight men that can be, for command purposes, split up to three groups (referred to as Snake, Eagle and Panther squads). All men have a machine gun with unlimited ammunition, as well as limited caches of grenades and rockets that can be found on the map. In later levels, the player is provided with some grenades and rockets at the start of the mission. The player's machine guns do not harm its own soldiers, but friendly fire from grenades and rockets is possible, which are also the only weapons capable of destroying buildings and vehicles.

Men can also die if hit by debris flung from exploding buildings and vehicles, get caught in man-traps, mired in quicksand , and hit by enemy fire. Men usually walk, but several vehicles are available in some missions. The games are split into several missions, which are usually sub-divided into phases. Dead soldiers are replaced by new ones at the start of each phase.

Each soldier that survives a mission is promoted and receives a small increase in the rate of fire, accuracy, and range. The player is only able to save the game upon completion of a whole mission. Each phase is structured around mission objectives which range from "Kill all enemies" or "Destroy enemy buildings" to "Rescue all hostages". Some phases are complex, and require the player to use their imagination, pre-planning and strategy.

For example, players may have to split their team into two or more groups and leave one group to defend an area or route, assigning its control to the game's artificial intelligence , while taking control of another group. The pre-mission screen shows a hill with a grave for each dead soldier, with recruits lining up in front of it and a sports-like score at the top of the screen. Soldiers each have unique names, while on the grand scale of things being nothing more than interchangeable cannon fodder. The game has hundreds of individually named recruits, of which the first few— Jools , Jops , Stoo and Rj —were named directly after the development staff.

As each recruit is killed in battle, he receives a tombstone on the hill and the next recruit in line takes his place. Cannon Fodder 2 introduced a variety of new settings: a Middle Eastern conflict, an alien planet and spacecraft, the medieval and gangster-themed Chicago. It nevertheless retained the same mechanics and gameplay. In the new settings, troops wielding grenades and rockets were replaced by such units as aliens and wizards, but nonetheless behaved in the same manner, as did battering rams representing trucks and so forth.

The game was more difficult than its predecessor, employing puzzle elements such as multiple ways—of varying effectiveness—to solve levels. It featured reduced use of water obstacles but retained mines and booby traps. Cannon Fodder 3 featured a military, counter-terrorism theme with more advanced weather settings. It retained grenades and rockets as the central secondary weapons and introduced further power-ups .

It expanded the selection of vehicles and added further enemy installations such as sniper towers. It also features an online cooperative mode.