Nano Wars

This addictive strategy game, currently in beta stages but working very smoothly, is an excellent example of casual strategy that can work like a charm as a multiplayer title. Created by Benoit Freslon, Nano Wars is an abstract, simple but compulsive game, where your goal is to expand the red colony to take over the playing field, while the AI controlled green colony is attempting the same.

The interface is very simple, and so are the rules, making Nano Wars very easy to get into. This simplicity does not trivialize the game's challenge, as beyond a good general strategy you need real-time logistical skills in order to insure that your forces are in the correct place at the correct time. Yes, the game is real-time, and it seems that quite necessarily so, but while many things may be happening all at once, the pedestrian pace of each individual action means that the usual lag shouldn't become an obstacle to a multiplayer implementation of the concept, or a similar one.

Some things that could be added to a multiplayer version:

1. The war could rage on a battlefield composed of several screens. When the game starts, it does so on the middle screen, a sort of neutral zone. The winner who conquers this screen then pushes the battle into his opponent's home screen. Winning here will make him the winner of the game, but losing will take the conflict back to the middle ground.

2. Battlefields could maybe be enchanced by introducing some terrain that affects movement speed and possible approach vectors. The developer would have to be careful not to damage the design's elegant simplicity.

Play Nano Wars!