Victory Through Superior Programming
Once upon a time in the dim mists of history, when geeks wore pocket protectors and shivered in over-cooled machine rooms filled with mainframe computers, running racks of punch cards through readers and poring over accordion-folded printouts, Silas Marner wrote a game for Xerox PARC's PLATO computer system called RobotWar. And it was good.
In RobotWar, you wrote a program to control a robot warrior, then pitted it in an area against the robots of others--the winner being the last bot standing. Marner did an Apple II version of the game--a less interesting game when played alone instead of on a networked system like PLATO--and since then, there have been occasional attempts to recreate the magic that Silas wrought.
Imagine, if you will, a RobotWar for the Internet era--with a community of avid players working to perfect their programs and defeat the current challenger, in a well-balanced game where, as in Magic, no program is perfect and some technique can best any bot. And tournaments and rankings and a progression system that opens new equipment and techniques to you as you progress.
You've just imagined Droid Arena 3.
This style of game is manifestly not for everyone; the actual game is in the coding, and players do little to nothing during actual battles, other than see how their droids perform and think about how to handle weaknesses they note before the next battle. Twitch gamers will merely find it frustrating. But those who like games that make you think--and actively enjoy programming--will discover why using the words "magic" and "RobotWar" in the same sentence is absolutely apt.
N.B.: Note that while Droid Arena has a trial period, there is a subscription cost to play after that period expires.
