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Entries Tagged as 'Design'

No Evocation without Representation

February 5th, 2008 · 11 Comments · Design

CDV has released the North American retail version of Ageod’s American Civil War, one of the best wargames of 2007. I’m writing a review of this release for Gameshark, so my full opinion on this game will be found there in a week or so. It’s really impossible to speak of the Ageod games without […]

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The Future of the RTS? It’s already here.

January 25th, 2008 · 29 Comments · Design, RTS

Gamasutra has just published an article from Nathan Toronto that goes over a lot of the same ground about real-time strategy in a sort of new way. It’s an interesting article purely from a conceptual standpoint, though my first reaction to it was “How many games has this guy actually played?” Mr. Toronto has a […]

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EU: Rome Updates

January 18th, 2008 · 10 Comments · Ancients, Design, Paradox, Preview

There have been 11 Developer’s Diaries for Europa Universalis: Rome. It’s probably a good time to summarize what we do and don’t know and, of course, poke at a few of the details. Not everything in this list is equally important, and the list is a little more negative than my expectations are. I am […]

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Thoughts on Harpoon

November 26th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Design, Matrix, Review

Larry Bond’s Harpoon – Commander’s Edition is everything it is supposed to be. It’s the same Harpoon that I fell in love with almost twenty years ago. It has all the scenarios that I played repeatedly from both sides, plus the EC 2003 scenarios that I missed. And there’s a Western Pacific Battleset with some […]

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Starting at the Cliff Face

November 8th, 2007 · 8 Comments · Blogs, Design

Zack Hiwiller has recently posted one of those essays that makes you nod your head in agreement and silently tell yourself that this is what you’ve been complaining about for years. Sports games are too hard. More precisely, they are very difficult for new or lapsed gamers to get into; they require you to have […]

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Joining an Eventful Discussion

November 5th, 2007 · 10 Comments · Cryptic Comet, Design, Imperium

It’s always nice when two independent developers disagree with each other on design stuff. Vic Davis of Cryptic Comet, home of Armageddon Empires, recently posted a mini-dissertation on the role that events play in strategy games. He compiled a list of the purpose that events can play and how they can be used to challenge […]

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