So what’s there to do in these here parts?
Most browser-based games are of a certain type. Hell, most every game is of a certain type. A game is either an adventure game or a shooter, a RTS game or an RPG. Sometimes you’ll have little mini-games of a different type than the game itself (Oddly enough, the only examples that popped into my head was the mini-games in “Beavis and Butthead in ‘Virtual Stupidity‘”, or the classic homage mini-games in Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude – I’d add a link, but the homepage is kinda adult…). Other times you’ll have a game that’s a hybrid of two styles – the two examples that come to mind here are the Quest for Glory games which combined classic quest/adventure games with RPG’s, and Archon/Archon Ultra, that combined a chess-like strategy game with a top-down (or in Archon Ultra’s case, isometric) one-on-one battle when two pieces meet and engage.
When we started playing browser-based games, most of the games we saw could be classified as RPG’s (though for some the connection was tenuous at best). Eventually though, we started coming across games like Travian and Ikariam, games that were of a completely different style. These games are basically strategy games. I haven’t looked much at Ikariam, but Travian bears a striking resemblance to a very basic form of games like Civilization. You deal with high-level strategy, not tactics. And after playing it for a while, we decided on a new goal: A hybrid game.
The main theme of the game would still be an RPG, but we’re thinking of adding a strategic element to it. Seeing as this is a rather new thought, it’s even less specific than usual. In the strategic browser-based games it’s usually villages and armies and whatnot, but that doesn’t really translate well into an Old West setting, so instead of villages we’d have to have something else – ranches maybe, or homesteads, or factories for… well, whatever it is that was manufactured in factories at the time. Instead of armies we’ll need other, more rural units – farmhands, marauders, cattlerustlers, militiamen, things like that. We’ll have to think this through…
Anyway, that’s about all I have on this at the moment. As always, any and all comments are welcome.
Cheers,
Kraz
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