Oasis

[Honolulu Blue]

The high concept for this game must have been "Civilization" meeting "Minesweeper". Allow me to try to explain.

You start each level with the 10x10 map blacked out except for the one square you're standing on. You have 85 turns to:

1) Find all the cities,
2) Connect the cities to each other using roads. Connecting cities allows each city to grow, and also allows movement to where the barbarians will be (I'll explain in a little bit).
3) Find the mines,
4) Put followers in the mines. Mining allows technology development which increases the damage the good guys cause, decreases the damage the barbarians cause, and other good things.
5) Find the obelisk. The obelisk contains the glyph. If you have at least one city surviving at the end of the level, you get to keep the glyph. It takes 12 collected glyphs to win the game.
6) Reveal the oasis. Revealing the oasis gains some scarab power with each square. Scarab power is used to defeat the barbarians if they happen to destroy all your cities. Revealing all the oasis squares gains a bonus letter. With 5 bonus letter, you get to go to the bonus level. The bonus level makes it easy to gain scarab power and a glyph.
7) Reveal the treasures in the cities. Treasures can increase the damage caused by people in the city, give a point bonus or scarab power bonus (if the city survives), or even pick up an advisor. Advisors are helpers that bend the rules in several ways. More about them a bit later.
8) Reveal the cairn(s). Cairns are place markers for where the barbarians will come from at the end of the level.
9) Pick up followers. Most squares (not oasis or city) yield one or more followers when revealed. These can be used to build roads, man the mines, or add population to the cities.

OK... picking up loose ends here. At the end of the 85 turns, there's a countdown. 10 real-time seconds to move people (now soldiers) from city to city and/or add some last-minute followers to the mines. Then the barbarians come. They sweep toward the nearest city (there are some other rules, but never mind for now) and battle whatever population is there. If they're defeated, and that's the last wave, you win the level and keep the glyph (if you found it). If they defeat the population in that city, they move on from city to city until either they or you hit zero. The bad news here is that the barbarians get tougher as they defeat more and more cities. If they destroy all the cities, your glyph (if you found it) will destroy up to 50 of them. If that's the end of them, then you can move on. If there are still more, scarab power can defeat as many of them as there are. If you run out of scarab power before you run out of barbarians on any level, it's game over.

Advisors are valuable helpers that allow the bending of the rules. I'll describe a couple of them. The Alchemist allows faster research, adds a bonus mine per level, and adds an extra 5 followers just for finding a mine. He's my favorite advisor. The Architect adds a bonus city, allows faster population growth, and allows a higher maximum city population. He's my least favorite, but still useful. There are other advisors who help with other things.

I was part of the open beta for this game, which has been around for quite awhile. One of the nice parts of it is that it doesn't take very long to play - a winning game will take between 45 and 90 minutes to get through - and that's nice for someone who doesn't have the 10+ hours to dedicate to a game like Civ. The replayability is high - I don't think I've ever seen the same map twice, and even if it did happen to pop up, a click in the other direction can make for a completely different game. Recommended.

Oasis was developed by Mind Control Software and is available from PlayFirst, Yahoo! Games, and probably some other places.

[Vince]

Pretty cool, from the demo. It was fairly easy, however...not sure that I'd be willing to drop $20 on it. I'll think about it, though.