LinLog

I've recently acquired a new favorite game: Konquest. It's one of the games that ships as part of KDE, and it has that wonderful addictive quality to it - for me, at least.

For those who don't know it, Konquest is a "galactic strategy game" which is incredibly simple to play. You compete against any number of other players for control of a galaxy consisting of any number of planets. Once controlled by one of the players, each planet builds a given number of space ships each turn. These ships have a combat rating determined by their planet of origin. The idea is that as you create ships, you send them out to conquer other planets. How successful you are depends on how many ships you can build and how strong they are in battle.

To me, this game has the same feel as Bandit Kings of Ancient China. I think it's the combination of a strategic element with simple game play. It's kind of like chess (which I'm rotten at, by the way) - the rules of the game are quite simple, but coming up with a winning strategy can be quite difficult.

Of course, I'm not trying to put Bandit Kings and Konquest on the same level as chess, but all three have fairly simple rules that make them fun to play. Sure, maybe Bandit Kings stretches the analogy a bit, but compared to some of the newer crop of strategy games, it's child's play. I've played a few that, in an effort to be as "realistic" as possible, included so many features and nuances that figuring them out was more like work than play. That might be great for the hard-core gamer type, but if I want to work, I'll fire up a code editor. Games are supposed to be for relaxing.