But it is amusing, being one of the zanier pretexts for a strategy game that I can recall. What relation this has with the actual gameplay, I’m not exactly sure. These ‘bots are tasked with driving a container ship (dropship, perhaps?) from planet to planet, and are always being harangued by their leader, Commander Zod. The game’s narrative, such as it is, follows the exploits of two slacker, alcoholic red robots named Brad and Allen. Z is a real-time tactics game set in a science fiction universe populated by armies of red and blue robots. That (admittedly) rather nit-picky distinction aside, let’s start looking at the actual game and talk about how it works. I realize a case could be made otherwise – that Z is a real-time strategy game instead of a tactics game, but feel that for my purposes viewing it as a tactics game is more instructive.
The game, as we will see, is more about trading and manipulating physical resources – territories and their conferred advantages, as well as military hardware – than acquiring and expending stores of abstracted value. Players do build up armies over time, but there is not a direct method for harvesting or accumulating resources or any sort of economy simulation. By my definition, Z is not technically a real-time strategy game as such, and falls more into the real-time tactics subgenre. Ok, so let’s get this clear right off the bat. Then, I’ll discuss its mechanics in more depth, along with their limitations and what I see as their potential in modern strategy games design. In the following paragraphs, I’m going to describe the game as a reminder for those who have not played it recently and as an introduction for those who might not have played it at all. I hope to find time to write analyses of all of these games, but I thought I’d begin with Z. Recently, to satisfy both of my inclinations, I’ve picked up and begun playing copies of a variety of classic and/or remastered RTS: Earth 2150, Battlezone ’98 Redux, Homeworld Remastered, War Wind 1 and 2, Battle Realms, and Bitmap Brothers’ Z (well, the steam version, which is based on a remake of the original).
It is fascinating and instructive to struggle through less-than-optimal user interfaces (truly a first world problem, right?) to explore mechanics that have fallen by the wayside and to examine design practices from the pre-esports era. In part, these ventures are driven by nostalgia: to recapture or relive the wide-eyed enthusiasm and untrammeled joys that I remember from childhood.īut, as a student of strategy games design, I also find it interesting to analyze the design of older games. Some may be less so, like Earth 2150 or War Wind. Some of these are broadly popular, like StarCraft or WarCraft or Tiberian Sun. Thanks to everyone who supports me, it means the world to me.Įvery so often, I return to one of the RTS I played when I was a kid.
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