Strategy Games
I've talked about genre games here before, interactive fiction and tower defense, specifically, but today, I want to talk about strategy games.
Strategy games are something that we all know about, even if we don't know that we know. Checkers and chess are the two classic examples. Personally, I rather like chess. It's an ancient game, with simple rules, set pieces, and nearly infinite possibilities. I was surfing around online, and found this site, Chess.com, that has a good online flash option to play the game. I don't recommend choosing the 'easy' level; the computer player will simply stalemate you instead of checkmating you, but that could just be because I'm not a very good chess player....
Another cool option on this site is the "turn-based" game. You can set up an online game with a friend, and simply play at your own pace. The site will notify you when it's your move. If you want to play with chess books and tips, and slowly massacre your opponent, this is the option for you....
Anyway, I'm really talking about chess as a strategy game. It's got all of the features of the genre: a set playing field, pieces with individualized ranges, strengths, and moves, and alternating turns. The Internet has taken this game genre to a whole new level, and I'll talk about some of those games in later posts, but Chess, that classic, ancient, orginal game, had all of the features centuries ago. There is nothing new under the sun.....
