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[UnconformistSheep]

Okay, here's my proposal:

This game takes you back to 15th century apocryphal England. As one of the Knights of the Round Table, your goal is to take advantage of King Arthur's departure for a Crusade to unite England under one rule -- yours.

As a turn-based strategy game, this game is not impressive. It is afterall a two-man job. You can find better strategy games in Abandonia. But a strategy game that you can play in 15 minutes or less? That's what this game is: a shot of strategy insulin to play over the coffee break. If that's what you're looking for, this game is for you.

The interface may come off as threatening, but this game is quite the simplicity itself. You command one and only one campaign through the entire game, which you are able to move one territory per turn. But beware to keep your campaign within reach of your castle: losing your castle means losing the game. As a defence measure, you can leave soldiers behind to defend your territories: you can re-ingress them back into your campaign once you pass back through the land.

Adding to the difficulty of the game, 4 different kinds of mercenaries are available for your bidding: knights, foot soldiers, bowmen and catapults. Foot soldiers are best for defence, bowmen and catapults for offence, while knights are middle of the road soldiers. Here are tuples with the details (the ratios are calculated based on the amount of peasant damage they can inflict or withstand relatively to the gold cost of the soldier): (knight, A: 75%, D: 62%), (foot soldier, A: 50%, D: 100%), (bow man, A: 100%, D: 50%), (catapult, A: 80%, D: 10%).

(The developer must not have put much thought into this: there is no advantage in buying catapults. They may be very strong in absolute terms, but for the cost of 2 catapults you can hire 5 bowmen for the very same attack power and 5 times the defence power.)

As an Abandonia exclusive, this Deluxe version (the commercial version of the game) adds 4 buttons to the game interface allowing you to: fortify a castle, challenge a player for a Joust (an arcade touch to the game), summon Merlin to help you weaken a territory (limited to a couple of times, depending on the difficulty level), and collect emergency taxes (at the cost of future taxes, and potential revolts). An additional level of difficulty is added to this version: Knight, where you are completely blind, you do not even know where the other players are. You can also customize the number of computer players to play against, as well as select your own character (not only Sir Lancelot).

Right-click the icons for more information, or press F1 for help. The kort.doc file is also rich of juicy details.

While this is a very neat game, the game sins for its monotony. The computer players are too easily beatable -- so much so, even first-time players should be able to come on top of most matches -- and the lack of maps other than that of England is a major omission.

Arguably, the remark about the catapults would be best left for the forum, but I think it's an observation people will appreciate, and a fair point to make in a review given the absurdity of the design choice.

Editor's Rating: 3
[ I might give it a 4 myself: but realistically speaking, it probably bodes 3 by most people's standards. but feel free to inflate the rating if you like. ]
Publisher: MVP Software [ or should we just put it as "Independent", given I don't think they published anything else. ]
Compatibility: Dosbox [ I only have Linux installed ATM, so I haven't tried Windows: can someone please give it a try? ]

Screenshots:







(more)

EDIT: Added images as thumbnails. Press them for the full size. Note: I didn't add the losing/victory ending because I think such screenshots take some fun out of the game. And we may want to omit the joust.png screenshot: that arcade sequence is more of a bonus than an actual part of the game. Feel free to also omit story-2.png, or use some of the other screenshots over the "more" link.

By the way, we may want to add the shareware version as an extra, for the historical value. eheh But it's up to you guys. ;-) (links to that version can be found in this post.)

[marko river]

Well, thanks a lot for review

Now it is also time to point Offers section to you, as well as this particular topic inside it. I'll handle his review now, but from now on, you should have your own topic in Offers, as well as to be aware of FTP for easier submitting. Also, please upload screenshots packed inside single .zip archive. Those shots are made by you, right?

As for your rating as well as developer/publisher info, release year and compatibility, you can place that info inside .txt file and upload it to FTP as well.

Your observation about catapults can remain in review, you should be objective about game, but that doesn't exclude you own impressions and observations.

Please do read those instructions, you might need them again sometimes. And thanks again

[UnconformistSheep]

Hi Marko,

I have read the submitting content thread. If you'd like, I will submit things to the ftp server as stipulated.

The year of publishing is 1994 according to the game information (see screenshots). Those screenshots were taken by myself using DosBox; I ordinarily use hq2x as the graphical filter, but I changed it to the default normal2x filter for the screenshots.

As I mentioned, I didn't got to test the game in Windows: I don't have it installed in my laptop. If you could give it a quick try, it would be great -- otherwise, I can also have someone test it in a Windows machine.

Thanks!

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by UnconformistSheep

As I mentioned, I didn't got to test the game in Windows ....

Kinda pointless, even if it runs in WinXP on most modern hardware it will run without sound. I even wouldn't try it in Vista or W7 ....

It runs fine in dosbox 0.74, so you don't really need to run it directly in windows anyway.

Rule of thumb: dosgame -> dosbox.

[marko river]

Originally Posted by UnconformistSheep

I have read the submitting content thread. If you'd like, I will submit things to the ftp server as stipulated.

Review has been taken care of, so at least zip the shots and upload those to FTP. Also, if the archive you got from us had any save games or some files from other distributor, selling shop, sites and similar (meaning those were obviously not part of the game originally but added later by third party) please delete them and then zip and re-upload the archive. If it's not too much to ask....

[UnconformistSheep]

Originally Posted by marko river

Also, if the archive you got from us had any save games or some files from other distributor (...)

I see no such trash in the archive. It has exactly the same number of files as the shareware version -- the only difference are text files like ORDER.doc (only in the shareware version, of course), and one JOUST file in yours Deluxe version, which sounds like it is responsible for the extra "joust" feature. You can ship it!

[marko river]

Excellent! Thanks for your help mate

[UnconformistSheep]

Guys, don't forget to publish this baby! ;-)

[Paco]

i dont see anything on FTP and you didnt made a post about this in your Thread in Offers-Board so hush and make one.

[marko river]

Originally Posted by UnconformistSheep

Guys, don't forget to publish this baby! ;-)

Takes some time for everything to be ready and finalized. We never forget about new games