A Strategy/Tactics game, Stellar Crusade was released in 1988 by the famous developed Strategic Simulations, Inc.. It is a DOS game and is perfect for all video game lovers.
Complex futuristic turn-based strategy, invented, as they say, just one man and that one documentation to it is a few dozen pages.
The essence of the game in the following. Distant future, there are two factions – the League and the Holy people's Republic, the first – imperialists and atheists, the second – Democrats and religious fanatics. They are among a long grueling war for control of a small star sector, a rich variety of resources. The game is turn based, one turn is three months, after ten years, summed up the confrontation.
By default, you can only play for League, namely the League must ALWAYS play a human player. For fanatics playing either the computer or the person, but then necessarily against the other person. By the way, the author constantly emphasized that it is focused primarily on multiplayer on one computer, and that the only way to open up all her wealth.
The game system is very complex, and understand it to the end is not yet possible. Each turn is divided into three "phases", each of which is special on the list of actions that you can make it. In fact, this mini-moves (but without reference to a specific time), and fanatics have an advantage – they always go first in each of the first two phases.
The first phase is economic, it is the most important. Here you take different economic decisions, plan the production and expand it, order training soldiers and building military equipment. The next phase is the "movement", it is necessary to move any units (military and civilian) on the map, as well as set the routes of ships and cargo between the planets of a star system. The third phase is "solution", it happens instantly and of you have does not depend – you actually see what caused your actions in the first two phases.
The game ends when you want it, in the beginning of the game you can set the number of moves after which should be announced the final statistics. Who was stronger at the moment wins. Another way is complete destruction of the enemy, but actually do to achieve this is unknown.
What was really unusual is, oddly enough, the graphics. In front of us like a familiar field, divided into cells, with multiple conditional icons, but what is unusual is that there is a field like "hanging" in space in isometric perspective. More graphics here really, and no, the interface can rightly be called one of the most difficult even within the genre.
The verdict – a game for a very narrow category of players who love to explore and learn various complicated forgotten rarity. But also valuable as a rare example of a real game, which was done in the first place (at least, according to the main developer) not for money but for pleasure.
Wish to enjoy your afternoon playing some classic videogames? Play Stellar Crusade online for free here.
Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com
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