To gear up for Caesar IV (which I haven’t gotten yet), I reinstalled Tilted Mill’s last game, Children of the Nile. I do this from time to time for both review and remembrance because it is a good way to get a handle on a developer’s feeling for the material and to refresh your memory […]

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Expansion packs for strategy games can be tough to evaluate. Most do little more than add a few new factions or units, maybe additional scenarios or maps. They, by definition, expand a core game – not reinvent it. Actually, the first expansion packs for the Civilization series, designed for Civ 2, were merely scenario packs, […]

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The British Academy of Film and Television Arts revealed its first ever Video Games Awards winners. The strategy winner? The much maligned, but, in my opinion decent, Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. The Movies won for simulation. Of course, the strategy nominees were mostly silly and Football Manager was nominated everywhere. So this is […]

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Scott Jennings has written a great post about official game forums and the problem/potential they have for developers. It sums up a lot of things I’ve alluded to before but in a much more elegant and amusing way.

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Last month I said that Paraworld would be an interesting title to watch. It has a truly unique setting and, most importantly, dinosaurs. People love dinosaurs. Bill Harris has suggested that it might be “the most beautiful gameworld ever created“. I avoid using superlatives like “best game”, “prettiest world” or “worst writer”. Not because I […]

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After a long absence, I’ve submitted to the Carnival of Gamers again, putting forth my overlong post about the Wilson/Emrich strategy guide for the original Civilization. Lots of good stuff this month, all hosted by Corvus Elrod at Man Bytes Blog.

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