http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/games/popular/month/Windows/core/casual/strategy/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss ]]> This Month's Most Popular Games Tagged 'Windows, core, casual, strategy' on The Great Games Experiment http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/css/logo.jpg http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/games/popular/month/Windows/core/casual/strategy/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss ]]> en-us Would you like continent-spanning battles of great armies, or delving through forbidden dungeons looking for treasure? If you have trouble choosing between the two (and hey, who doesn't?), Empires & Dungeons may be the game for you!

Empires And Dungeons is a simple, fast-playing hybrid of strategy and role-playing. You are a medieval lord in a fantasy kingdom battling against rivals for control of the throne. You must hunt resources, upgrade your castle, raise an army, and battle armies in a quick-paced strategy game.

There are also randomly-generated dungeons to explore, loaded with magical artifacts to aid you and vast treasures to finance your campaign. Battle fierce monsters, and gain experience, honor, and quest items needed to vanquish your rivals and take the throne!

Empires & Dungeons is fast, easy to learn, addictive, and most of all fun! Download the free trial tonight and conquer your own empire!

]]> 23 Nov 2006 12:28:28 Bontago is a single or multiplayer 3d real-time strategy/puzzle game. By stacking blocks each player increses their area of influence, and can build closer and closer to the goal in the middle of each level.

]]> 03 Dec 2006 10:02:40 Whoever thought managing a space station in the middle of nowhere would be such an adventure? Outpost Kaloki is a light-hearted, comical 3D strategy / management game. Featuring gorgeous cartoon-style graphics and a whimsical storyline, Outpost Kaloki puts you in charge of new space station which you must grow into profitability.

Keep the princess happy, and keep your customers happier as you attract new and bizarre visitors to your deep-space lemonade stands, parks, and laboratories. Chat with a variety of genuinely strange alien creatures. Great fun for the whole family!

]]> 08 Dec 2006 12:06:08 Moonbase Commander is a turn-based strategy game where players compete to spread a web-like base across a lunar battlefield while annihilating their opponents. Players can select from four factions each of which has a unique look for it's units and a specifically voiced adviser (although all four have identical capabilities) and compete alone or in teams against other humans (locally or via the net) or the assorted Bots that are included. Competition takes place on a variety of terrain, sometimes barren and empty sometimes green and full of rivers.

Once a battle is started, players take turns using a limited supply of energy to launch weapons against their enemies or launch new buildings to expand their base. Both are done with a simple aim and force interface similar to Worms or most early golf games so it takes some skill to land a building exactly where you want it. Because buildings are connected to your main hub with a web of power lines, careful planning is required to avoid leaving important nodes unprotected. There are 18 different weapons and buildings each with an energy cost based on how powerful and useful it is. Ultimately, you must destroy an enemy's main hub unit to eliminate him from the battle.

Moonbase Commander has a minutes to learn, lifetime to master quality. There's never enough energy to do everything you want to and your opposition is always breathing down your neck. Should you risk a tricky shot to place an expensive shield generator by your hub or just settle for launching waves of cheap cluster bombs at those enemy anti-air batteries in hopes of overwhelming them. Maybe you should just bide your time and send up a few more observation balloons. The possibilities are surprisingly limitless in this simple yet complex game.

(from the Moby Games Moonbase Commander site)

]]> 09 Dec 2006 08:55:01 PoxNora is a collectible turn-based strategy game where you build a Magic-style deck from hundreds of online "runes". You use those runes in game by deploying champions to the battlefield and casting spells. Champions move and attack each turn similar to miniature-based combat. The game features tons of unique abilities and great artwork.

Registration and and a "training" deck are free. Additional rune packs can be purchased.

]]> 12 Dec 2006 04:19:46 This is the second game in the popular Settlers series. As in the first game, you start with just one main building from which you have to extend a network of roads and buildings. Resource management is important, and so planning your kingdom's infrastructure is an important part of the game.

There are more than 30 different professions your men can have, and many different building types. Of course, there are other settlers in your area, too, so war is unavoidable.

]]> 22 Dec 2006 04:07:22 Master Of Defense is a strategy game that lets you assume the role of a brave hero, who has been chosen to save the ancient kingdom from the hordes of monsters. The challenge of the game is to ward off relentless attacks of monsters and prevent them from capturing people in your castle.

]]> 01 Jan 2007 05:22:56 Stratagus was previously an open source project known as 'Freecraft', and its original purpose was to re-create the Warcraft 2 engine to the point of 100% playability. It succeeded in that goal and decided to move on towards other more challenging goals. Stratagus is now a general use open source engine that a large number of games have based themselves upon, such as Wargus, Battle of Survival, InsectWar, and more.

]]> 09 Jan 2007 04:48:39 Galcon is an awesome high-paced multi-player galactic action-strategy game. You send swarms of ships from planet to planet to take over the galaxy. It's arcade action risk with planets! Anyone can play - only takes 30 seconds to learn. Multi-player network game for up to 12 players with teams. 15 different single player missions against 7 different computer players. Attack planets with thousands of swarming ships! Short battles, epic warfare - only 5 minutes per round. Net ranking of all net players. Good times guaranteed!

]]> 23 Jan 2007 06:58:24 UFO: Aftershock is a computer strategy game created by Altar and released in 2005. It's a squad combat game at its core with overlying strategic elements and a clear debt to the lauded classic X-COM: Ufo Defense, though a smaller one than that of its predecessor, UFO: Aftermath.

It's set in a post-apocalyptic 2050 and comes after the events of UFO: Aftermath. The game assumes that you took up the Reticulans offer of resettling the most able of humanity in a space station, while allowing the rest to die, consumed by the Biomass that the Reticulans could not control (However, if you were a particularly skilled player, you could reject their offer, and save the Earth while defending against both the Reticulans and the Biomass. Then this game can be seen as taking place in a parallel universe). Having lost contact with the Earth, you must find out what happened. The combat section is a real-time system with adjustable and pausable speed, and it has been improved to feature such things as multi-level battlefields and enterable buildings. The strategic section holds resource and squad management, research, development, some limited diplomacy and planning of attacks. As a departure from the X-COMs and the prequel, there is no air-to-air interception.

UFO: Aftershock as well has a mobile version. The license was given to Redboss Games, a subsidiary of Redboss.

(text from wikipedia)

]]> 13 Feb 2007 04:19:08 Dune, by Cryo Interactive, was the first attempt of making a commercial game based on Frank Herbert's Dune universe.

Dune blended adventure with economic and military strategy, and is considered by many the most immersive Dune computer game. Loosely following the story of the novel, the game casts the player as Paul Atreides, with the ultimate goal of driving the Harkonnen from Dune, while managing spice extraction, military, and later, ecology through the native Fremen tribes. As the player progresses, his troops are equipped with weapons from "krys knives" to atomics, tap into Paul's latent psychic powers, and get acquainted with such characters from the book as Chani and Liet Kynes.

The game, seen always through the eyes of Paul, is a mix between RTS and adventure gaming. While the basis of the game is the strategy component, dialog between characters and a linear plotline give the game more depth than most strategy games. The player is also required to do some miniquests involving talking to characters and traveling to locations, which adds a small adventure game element.



(loosely edited text from wikipedia)

]]> 13 Feb 2007 06:52:47 Zatacka, also known as Achtung, die Kurve!, is a freeware, multiplayer DOS computer game that supports from two-player up to six-player gaming.

The game bears some resemblance to the game Snake, though in Zatacka the main goal is to make your opponent hit the wall, his kurve or your kurve. As a result, the game resembles closely to the famous Light Cycle of the 1982 movie Tron. You control the kurve by only two buttons: one makes the snake turn left; the other, right. Although the game has primitive graphics, the gameplay is considered very good and the game is loved by many fans worldwide.

There's a strategic and tactical depth that goes unmatched in the small-games-to-play-on-a-break gaming world. Even though the simplicity is striking (anyone can play it) there are an infinite amount of tactics that can be applied in this game.

It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master! Be warned though - it's addicting!

]]> 23 Feb 2007 01:06:02 UFO: Afterlight is the third in the UFO series from Altar Interactive. Set fifty years after the war on Earth, the people of Earth have been forced by the Reticulans to leave. Some of them were sent to the orbital station above the Earth, and their story is told in UFO: Aftershock. Another group were tranported to Mars, and this is their story. With 10,000 cryogenically sleeping people in their care, a group of about 30 talented humans have to carve out an existance on Mars. The terraformation of Mars as well as defending territory from alien invaders are all part of their mission. Not only do you have to manage the day to day operations at the base - such as research, production and construction - You also have to fight out battle in pausable real-time with many levels of intricacy such as the ability to make detailed plans for your soldiers. As the game progresses, new avenues of research opens up which in turn opens up new skillsets and weapons for your soldiers. You will get to know your personell intimately as they progress, and with a strong RPG-element you can mould them into a fighting force with diverse abilities.

This game contains many different types of gameplay which, as a whole, creates something that is a lot more than the sum of its parts.

]]> 09 Mar 2007 09:06:20 Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy computer game set in the Middle Ages. It was released in 1999, and it is the second game of the Age of Empires series developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft.

In the original Age of Kings, the player can choose from 13 civilizations. Each has a distinct personality, with particular strengths and weaknesses patterned on the real civilizations. Each civilization also has some unique units (ships and warriors) with more-or-less historically accurate names.

]]> 17 Mar 2007 12:53:35 Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a brand new, genre-bending title that ups the ante on traditional puzzle games by incorporating strategy, role-playing elements and a persistent storyline. Set in the Warlords universe, the game challenges players to save the land of Etheria from evil Lord Bane as gamers engage in battles fought by means of competitive, head-to-head "match-three" style puzzle games in one of three gameplay modes: Single-player, Instant Action or Multiplayer. Victory will advance a player's customisable hero, magical arsenal, creature companions and more—ultimately rewarding gamers at nearly every turn and deepening their immersion into the richly diverse world. The game's remarkable mix of classic puzzle gameplay and an abundant suite of characters, customisations, spells, companions, tameable monsters and more provides a fresh take on the puzzle genre that offers endless hours of replayability. Designed specifically for handheld gaming systems, Puzzle Quest can be enjoyed in long or short doses, cultivating a casual but deeply satisfying and compelling gameplay experience.

]]> 31 Mar 2007 09:08:10 RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 is the second game in the RollerCoaster Tycoon series. The basic gameplay is: you build a theme park with rides and shops and scenery. There are many scenarios to play each with the own goals and challenges to complete.

There is also a editor, where you can design your own scenarios. This game adds a few things to the first game, the obvious: new scenarios, slightly improved graphics, more rides, shops and scenery. But other than these there wasn't much this game has to offer that the first one didn't. Even so it is a very good game, with a lot of replayability.

]]> 15 Apr 2007 11:10:22 Total War is the complete experience of warfare presented in the most realistic way possible through the use of state of the art technology in graphics and AI. You'll need strategic brilliance to manage your campaign, with the training, recruitment and funding of your armies. You'll need cunning to deploy spies and emissaries to outwit your opponents while maintaining a web of alliances. And you'll need tactical brilliance to take your army out onto the battlefield and crush your enemies.

]]> 18 Apr 2007 07:12:09