Archon Classic Preview
At the Utah Indie Game Night, I got the chance to play the upcoming title from React Games, Archon Classic. It is still unfinished, but quite playable.

I'm old enough to remember playing the original. *Sigh*. I was excited about the chance to play this new version. We ended up having a four-player team game which lasted a half-hour or so. And after having played it, I can only say that I'm even MORE excited about this game now. I had that much fun.

And it's that faithful to the original. So faithful you'll want to play this one with a gamepad. So faithfulthat you can choose to play with old-school graphics from the original 8-bit game and capture some nostalgia if you are old enough to have it about the original game.

If you do not remember the original, it was one of the original action-strategy games. The game is played on a gridded board. At first blush, it looks a little like chess. Some squares are light, some dark, some neutral, and some change color between light and dark over time. Each piece has a different range of movement and some other movement restrictions. Two of the figures on the board can cast spells to do things like reverse the color cycling of tiles, resurrect defeated pieces, and so forth.

The goal of the game is to possess all five special squares on the game board, or to be the last man standing. (As one of the developers told me, it's amazing how often it comes down to the latter in the new game)

The big difference between Archon and chess is what happens when a piece lands on an square occupied by an opponent. In Archon, it's not an automatic victory. It means a action-based battle must take place. One side may get an advantage if the square color favors their army (the dark army gets bonuses on darker squares, etc), or they have bonuses obtained from possessing goal squares.

The health lost by the piece in battle remains lost, however (except for the shapeshifter) - which means it is possible to "wear down" a tough piece with weaker pieces over the course of a couple of fights.

This old-school gameplay is faithfully re-created by the new game. It's everything the old game was, but better. These guys were clearly fans of the original, and have taken great care to keep the original game intact.

But then they've added upon it with additional options and gameplay modes. There are quite a few variations, of which I think the original designers would approve. The boards have some different layouts. You can have power-ups that appear randomly on the battlefield that may give your piece health, spread-shot fire, and so forth. Another mode allows your pieces to level-up by defeating enemies - which counters the weaker health they normally. You can choose from several different game boards.

You can have up to four players in either a team mode (each player controls half an army) or in a free-for all. In team mode, you can "double up" pieces on a square. Battles don't begin until everybody has moved for the turn, so you can end up with a 2-on-2 battle over a particular square. I did not play free-for-all, but with each player taking a "corner" and a half-sized army, it should be interesting.

I personally feel the introduction of pick-ups in the game mode we played did wonders for the action sequences, which I always felt was somewhat lacking in depth in the original game. I did not play it against the AI, so I cannot vouch for the AI's ability in either strategy or action mode.

We ran into a few little bugs, but the game is still a couple of weeks from going beta.

As it is a hybrid game, it may not appeal to action gamers who hate strategy / tactics, or strategy gamers who hate real-time action. But if you don't mind a mix of gameplay styles, it's a pretty dang fun game. A good strategy can cover for less-than-stellar gaming reflexes or vice versa. Hey, I'd pretty much lost the game last night, but still managed to take on all comers with my remaining unicorn until the final battle against the sole remaining dark piece, so I feel good about how I did!

It looks like React Games has done a very nice job with the classic license. Go indie! I really look forward to playing the final version.

Labels: Game Announcements, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:13 AM (Permalink)