So, previously on Trouble Thinking I mentioned the really quite interesting and fun long-long-long-term browser game “Neptune’s Pride”.
Well, the developer that created Neptune’s Pride has made another strange strategy game to play every 15-24 hours for a month called “Blight of the Immortals“.
“Blight of the Immortals” is a bit of a different beast. Perhaps because they realized Neptune’s Pride is a spectacular frustrating exercise in trying not to get back-stabbed by horrible assholes, they’ve made Blight a cooperative enterprise. There’s still competition between players, but it’s more of a race than a violent orgy of betrayal unseen since the days of Caligula.
The setup for the game is that there’s some generic fantasy world (orcs, elves, etc etc) that is beset by a terrible blight! It turns those it kills into shambling horrors. They aren’t dead, but they yet move upon the countryside eating, pillaging… growing. Basically zombies yeah. So, in response to this, you and 8 other players play the “basically forward thinking alliance of races”. You have a small number of controlled cities and units, and you need to kill the zombies. You do this by both sending your armies against them, and growing your armies through trade or conquest. The majority of the world starts as uncontrolled Independent Cities, who are dicks. Rather than valiantly join the fight against the growing horde, they sit there being assholes until you pay them or conquer them.
The game, like Neptune’s Pride, is basically played in real-time. Each unit, though, takes absolute ages to move. So you set your army of Dwarfs in motion at 8 AM, and check on their progress tomorrow at 7 AM. The simple strategy of trading needed coins with other players, setting up your little towns by upgrading defenses and economic power, and aligning your armies is really engaging. It’s also really hard unless everyone is working together, which is actually the fun part. You need to coordinate your efforts and trade coins/units/towns in order to bring your forces to bear fast enough to stem the tide of Undead.
I would say that at a price of Not Any Money, you have no reason not to check out this really fun little game.
