Real-Time Tactics

I knew when I saw the name "Dugan" attached to this thing that I had to play it. Made for a recent TIG Source competition, Laser Bunny is a simple game with charming cel-art and pretty decent gameplay. Arrow keys and the space bar do the usual Zelda/projectile number, the goal is to race through a maze of hedges, blasting enemies and getting to the end before the rising water consumes your hairy hare.

Battleships Forever -- a finalist in the "design innovation" category at this year's Independent Games Festival -- is billed by its designer, Sean Chan, as a space RTS. Actually, it's real-time tactics rather than strategy -- no diplomacy, no resource extraction or building construction, and here at PTT!, we are nothing if not anal in our identification of (and support for) obscure genres.

It's also very nice indeed, despite the occasional crash bug (but it's not yet up to version 1.0, so we may hope these will be taken care of).

Chronic Logic has developed a reputation as one of the best "indie" developers in the field--among other things, they created Bridge Construction Set and Gish. In Kingdom Elemental, they return with a very different game: a tense, nicely polished game of tactical fantasy combat.

Over the years, conventional RTS games have gotten prettier and prettier, until today you can have hundreds of screaming Romans running across the screen in a scene that looks like something out of Cecil B. DeMille.

Kind of amazing, really--expect that, with rare exceptions, not much has changed in terms of the actual gameplay. It's still build, turtle, rush.

What if, instead of concentrating on improving the graphics, you took the "S" in "RTS" seriously, stripped away the resource extraction and tech tree, and looked for ways to create diverse strategic challenges with each level and thoughtful use of combined arms?