Rob Zacny

Episode 367: Bite-sized Strategy

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I know I am late to comment on the topic, but since I have started following this podcast (a year or two ago?) I kept wondering if a old favorite of mine would pop up, but it never has.  If they remembered it bite-sized gaming would have been a place to put it, so probably not.

 

The game is Slay and is old, dating back to early windows (there are also iOS and Android ports now).  I have come back to it year after year because it is an exceptionally light game to play against the computer--I think there is multiplayer on the Windows client but I haven't ever tried it.

 

The game is dirt simple, but something about the mechanics of it are so fundamentally sound that I could play hours of it at a stretch.  It's territory control and resource management; you can't invade any hex if an equal or greater force (of the owning player) is adjacent to it.  You combine pawns to increase their strength, but doing so increases the maintenance costs.  If a territory falls below zero cash on hand, all its pawns die.  First level pawns can only capture unopposed, but to maintain a second-level pawn you need at least six squares (which you captured and held with first-level pawns) and can't leave yourself exposed.

 

I love it and would be interested in hearing it talked about.

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I like Slay.

 

Mother of all Battles is another small strategy game of his I liked. Although some of the large maps took hours to complete, the small ones with larger land masses could be done in a short break. It didn't have a good production information management interface, so after the climactic struggle to establish yourself, you'd tend to check out and mass-produce paratroopers and bombers to keep things simple.

 

Critical Mass is another of his I liked. It was a simultaneous-turn-based space combat game (with customizable ships, Rob!) It also had a sort of "campaign mode" where you built up your fleet over time, but it didn't have much challenge once you got over an early hump. Also, the scenarios didn't vary nearly enough. Fun, though. I think it is an ancestor of Flotilla and the board game Galaxy Truckers.

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I also remember Critical Mass!  I never played much of it but I adored the mechanics.  I am not sure I ever bought the full game or got very far.  The turns were just enough to let you adjust your momentum, but kind of clunky so I would often not be entirely sure where I was aiming if I turned while firing.

 

I seem to recall an early Windows game, very simple, that had a similar turn-based momentum thing but was only there to let you race cars on a little puzzle track, but I don't imagine I'd ever be able to remember the name.  Aside from those examples I am not sure I have seen the mechanic anywhere else.

 

He did do interesting games.  I think his was the version of Capture the Flag that I remember playing on my computer for a long while, which used cover and line of sight mechanics extensively, but I could be mistaken.  The one I remember was, I think, a DOS game that I got on one of those CD shareware collections in the 90s.

 

MOAB intimidated me back then so I didn't really get into it.  It looked like there was something there, I just never got into it.

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He did do a CTF game. And, how could I forget about the glorious

, which got me through my boring computer lab monitor job in college? I think the question of what bite-sized strategy game is best is solved, everyone.

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