One of the attractions of microgames,
as I noted in my entry on Ogre, was their creation of
internally-consistent little worlds for the players. Ogre and its
sequel, GEV (Microgame 8), created a future in which tanks (and
infantry, and armored hovercraft) still dominated land warfare,
giving way only to a bigger and better armored vehicle, the
cybertank. Invasion of the Air Eaters (Microgame 12), and its deluxe
sequel, Air Eaters Strike Back, imagined a near-future Earth
united against an exterminatory alien menace, and a victorious human
civilization fighting a second invasion 100 years hence. Something in
this speculative world spoke to me: I've written an essay on Invasion, as well as a write-up on one of the scenarios from its
sequel. Further from home, Chitin (#2) envisioned an alien world where giant,
semi-intelligent insects battled one another for food. Rivets (#5)
created a similar conflict with a more tongue-in-cheek premise:
unintelligent, cartoonish robots fought one another on behalf of
automated factories in a future without humans.* And
One World, a micro-mini-game included in a two-for-one pack (#14),
featured two immobile, Buddha-like gods flinging their children at
one another, in the form of blades and clouds and stones. It was the
first time my brother and I had encountered something like a modern
Euro-game, with an abstract fantasy setting joined to a simple rules
system.
In a few cases, a microgame's setting
or design proved more interesting than the associated game. This was
particularly true of Holy War (#13), designed by Lyn Willis, which
took place in a pocket universe created by an intelligent cloud-being
named Amtik. Amtik's universe evolved faster than he** could control
it, developing stars, planets, life, intelligence, and an
interstellar civilization, the Eltani, within a few days. Just as
Amtik began deciding to switch off the experiment, the Eltani
discovered his sensor ducts, and thus the existence of “God.”
This divided them into two warring factions. One, the Holy Band,
wanted to ask Amtik not to turn off the universe; the
other, the Sunthrowers, wanted to attack him by flinging a star into
his ducts. The game simulated the two factions' interstellar war, in
which they used fleets of starships to fight one another and shepherd
their specialty craft – Pressorships and Emissaries of Prayer –
to Amtik's sensor ducts. The universe and its star systems appeared
on an innovative map that simulated three dimensions: a grid of large
hexes showed the X and Y axes, and a “stack” of smaller hexagons
within each larger hex represented the vertical. The rule book also
included several pages of notes listing the many types
of ships in the game's universe – some created the warp lines
that allowed FTL travel, some gave “luck” on die roles, etc. –
along with their Eltani names. In gaming terms, Holy War had a lot of
appealing “chrome” for its size and price. I never got around to
playing the thing, however, and I have read only mixed reviews of
actual game play. Perhaps I will give it a try anyway, one of these
days.***
Some of the microgames' worlds lacked
appeal, and some of the games seemed thrown-together.
Olympica (#7) featured a future battle on Mars between U.N. Space
marines and slaves of a self-aware computer network, the “Webbies,”
who could tunnel under the battlefield. Perhaps the premise
appealed to some, but the game didn't do much with it. Those who
actually played Olympica (this was part of my
“owned-but-never-played” pile) note it was imbalanced in favor of
the U.N. Black Hole (#10) pitted two mining companies against one
another for control of an asteroid with an embedded black hole, which
mainly provided an excuse for a wrap-around battlefield feature. Hot Spot (#15) had two
armies of light infantry dueling on the surface of a molten planet,
seeking control of large, floating stone platforms called “crustals”
- a gimmick that didn't add much to the game's rather generic rules
and dynamics. Annihilator (part of #14) was a low-quality rip-off of
Fred Saberhagen's Berserker. Dimension Demons (#17) I never purchased
or played, but reviewers said it was pretty bad.
Most of the Microgames had a
science-fictional or science-fantasy theme, but several of the
classics were pure fantasy, notably Melee (#3), Wizard (#6), and
Lords of Underearth (#18). At least two of these led to bigger and
better things, and all deserve a separate blog entry of their own.
* My brother and I owned Rivets but
never played it, and I suspect we would have found it boring. One had
to “program” the robots to attack specific enemies, which in
practice meant they often failed to find the right target and
had to go back to the factory for reprogramming.
** Or she. Amtik's gender was never clearly established.
** Or she. Amtik's gender was never clearly established.
*** There was apparently an episode of
Futurama with a vaguely similar theme, though a smaller scale.
(Above images via http://ixians.blogspot.com/2011/01/holy-war.html and boardgamegeek.com, respectively.)
