I’ve just spent most of the morning editing an article that talks about the most important RTS games in terms of putting strategy games on the map in the long term, and it’s got me thinking about all the ones i’ve missed…

C&C was my first love, to the extent that myself and my brother both made versions of the NOD and GDI logos which then hung on our doors for years to come, and I dabbled in warcraft one and two a little, but feel not enough.

Everywhere I go at the moment Dungeon Keeper also seems to be getting a lot of love- I’ve only played the sequel, as I was at the age when sequels = better. Was I really missing out by skipping the original? Does it still hold up? Feeling a bit bored of modern games atm, and as RTS was my first love I think it’s time for a redux.

Suggestions, anyone?

I was suprised to not see any mention of this game on the forum - it was the most awe-inspiring product shown at GDC last week, blowing away things like The Movies and Black & White 2, and was only the 2nd lecture to have a standing ovation for the speaker (the other was the Katamari Damacy lecture).

It’s a game of Life, The Universe and Everything, and has a startling amount of detail.
The talk started with Will Wright talking about procedural storage techniques and he started up this game to demonstrate what he meant. But soon the lecture devolved into just a demo of the game and most of it’s features.

It starts controlling a single cell organism in a “Freeform pacman” game, collecting food and being chased by viruses in a fractal, 2d top down landscape.
After scoring some points you get to “level up”, customizing your creature, adding in back-bone joints and little mouths or fins.
After doing this a few times you evolve into an aquatic creature, and the game changes to a 3d game space, as your creature swims around. As before you can level up and change the composition of your creature, changing its colours, limbs, bones etc. As you change it the game procedurally changes its animations to match.
The next stage brings your creature onto land, where you can add legs, heads, arms, tails, stingers, etc. You can hunt down other creatures and kill them while being chased by stronger ones. This section was likened by Will Wright to Diablo gameplay.
The next stage is sentience, and your creatures start using tools. Then its building rudimentary villages, which of course you design. Then its towns and vehicles and you can start wars with any rivals on the planet. Finally you produce a UFO to fly around the world and bomb your rivals from space!
Beyond that you can visit other planets with your UFO, invade or teraform them, or obliterate them with an orbital bombardment. You can abduct creatures, mix their DNA, take them to your home planet.

It all looks gorgeous and intuitive, and apparently is not being shown again until E3.

Definitely going to be a next big thing when it gets released. Guessing at the release date, based on the quality of the demo being played, they might be able to finish it for Christmas. However a safer bet is for this time next year.

Seems to be some kind of disturbing fairytale setting Pikmin/Sim Earth/Harvest Moon/Chulip/Battle Raper hybrid, and probably a few other things besides. Also it’s got a bunch of talent working on it, staff having being involved with series like Harvest Moon, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and it’s getting published by Marvellous Interactive. It’s the trailer that got me really intrigued.

The TGS07 trailer, including storybook visuals and brave knights on cows hyped by an amazing version of Ravel’s Bolero. In a game!

Count me in, however it plays.