There are two main types of strategy games out there: piece capture games that reach their pinnacle in chess, and area capture games that reach their pinnacle in go. Assimilation by Global Star Software is one of these area capture games. Those who are skilled at piece capture games like chess and checkers may have difficulty at first with the idea that controlling territory is more important than removing opponent's pieces, but this is the foundation of your strategy for this game. Those familiar with other area capture games like go will feel right at home with this game. I'd even go so far as to recommend this game for those wishing to learn Go, as the strategy you begin to learn here will stand you in good stead as you learn that more challenging game.There are only three types of moves: cloning to an adjacent space, jumping to move two spaces away, or using special teleport squares to jump to the other end of the teleport. If your landing square is adjacent to any opposing piece, those pieces change to your color, similar to play in Reversi or Othello. However, you need to remember that its not having the most pieces on the board that lets you win (unless every space on the board is filled), but totally blocking your opponent from moving.
There are ten different game boards to play on, each of which has a different maximum number of players – up to eight. Your opponents can be either AI controlled or other humans in multiplayer mode. Playing with more than just one opponent, even in single player mode against multiple AI opponents, leads to radical changes in the strategy you must adopt.
I recommend that new players begin with the "Twos Company" board.
As a demonstration of the vital importance of space, let me show you the conclusion of this game. I've jumped forward to an advance location, then started cloning pieces. This has left me with fewer pieces on the board, but my opponent is totally locked in while I have huge amounts of space to expand. So now its a waiting game.
This is a game with a small footprint but lots of strategy. Very easy to learn, it can be decidedly difficult to win, and can grow with you as your skills improve.
I first encountered a computer in high school, where we learned programming on workstations. Enjoying that, I became a computer lab assistnat which gave me the wonderful job of going to the computer room on my frees instead of sitting in the cafeteria or library. We later found out that the mainframe we first learned on was a bit older than we were... it had vacuum tubes in the back. Needless to say, no fun & games on that beast, so we brought in a Commodore 64 to play Ultima during our frees.
At home I had a Mac, and surprise... game options were slim there as well. So, while Dark Castle was good for a quick game here or there, and I ran through every Might & Magic game that came out for the Mac, I spent most of my gaming time playing AD&D with friends. I took my Mac to college with me, and started programming it to take care of most of the tedious dice rolls and book-keeping when I was the dungeonmaster for our regular group. Better games started coming out for the mac then as well: Tetris and Spectre were favorites.
After college, our AD&D group was scattered, so my wife and I started looking for computer games that would fill the gap. We also got our first Windows machines then, so there were many more options than in the mac arena at the time. We got each other EQ for Christmas, and have been playing MMOG's ever since. We left EQ to alpha and beta test DAoC (hey out there to all my scouts and the other archers from CritShot)and stayed there for several years, played around with AO in some spare time, tried SWG and Horizons, City of Heroes and EQ2 held our interest for a while, back to DAoC for Catacombs, and WoW. Although I've played some single player RPG games, and some cooperative RPG games, I definitely prefer MMOGs. FPSs tend to get me slightly motion sick.
We recently got a Mac Mini for the kids, and our oldest son has a PS2, so we're playing some games on those systems as well.
