War Light

October 12, 2010 3:12 PM

WarLight is a turn-based strategy game similar to the board game Risk.

Level 3 is difficult, bordering on hair-pullingly-frustrating. The challenge levels beyond that are heinous, bordering on never-want-to-spend-time-on-the-internet-again.

Also available in multiplayer play-by-email.

posted by mudpuppie (20 comments total)

Just got sucked in. Be back in a few days.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 4:20 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Sweet, this used to be Silverlight only.
posted by mkb at 4:21 PM on October 12, 2010

Because a big part of my brain was damaged from exposure to small but chronic levels of adult contemporary music in the 80s, I keep hearing Neil Diamond singing 'turn on your WarLight, let it shine wherever you go' when I set out to crush Kamchatka. Otherwise, it's a fun game.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 4:30 PM on October 12, 2010 [4 favorites]

kuujjuarapik, I just learned to hate you a little bit.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:35 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Fuck. After how fucking long it took to wean myself off Cursed Treasure, now this. My productivity just got loaded into a rocket and pointed towards Pellucidar.

Great. Thanxabunch.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 4:45 PM on October 12, 2010

The interface is frustratingly obtuse. It seems like every action requires clicking through multiple windows. If you want a Risk clone that's a little more streamlined and fast-paced, I recommend Lux (especially with the option toggled to hurl all of your forces at the targeted territory with a single click). Or Dice Wars, if you want less deployment strategy and more luck-of-the-draw randomness (and kdice if you want multiplayer).
posted by Rhaomi at 4:51 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I only have room for one Risk-like PvP addiction and it's gonna be kdice.
posted by nicwolff at 4:51 PM on October 12, 2010

Landgrab is a good choice with lots of maps and players, too.
posted by rikschell at 5:58 PM on October 12, 2010

I always thought Risk was pretty over-rated as far as actual strategy goes. It seems like taking the dice away would make it more strategic, but playing a few rounds it seems pretty much the same.
posted by paisley henosis at 6:02 PM on October 12, 2010

I think Landgrab is a far superior option for a Risk clone. Any reason War-Light (or any other clone for that matter) is better is lost on me...
posted by andythebean at 6:13 PM on October 12, 2010

Silly Soft makes a game called Lux which has a random map generator. Don't know if any of the above mentioned stuff does that.

http://sillysoft.net/

And you can build your own maps and download maps made by others and play against a variety of AI.
posted by LoudMusic at 6:32 PM on October 12, 2010

I played it off and on for a couple of days but am not enough of a strategist to understand how to win the "challenge crazy" game.
posted by maxwelton at 6:58 PM on October 12, 2010

Obligatory Diplomacy reference here.

I wish I could run (or even play) another series of Diplomacy-Metafilter games. That was the benefit of my last job: I had the time and freedom to dedicate. Sadly, my current lifestyle leaves me burnt out by 5p and unwilling to focus on things involving, y'know, thought.
posted by spamguy at 9:42 PM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Nthing Lux. It's highly addictive.
posted by zardoz at 10:19 PM on October 12, 2010

Blasted through level 3 without a problem. Closed the window on European challenge rather than let the nazi win. Pretty fun, will play more later, I think.
posted by Hactar at 1:21 AM on October 13, 2010

Oh My God Where Did Those Three Hours Go?
posted by alona at 3:43 AM on October 13, 2010

Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
posted by Joe Chip at 4:52 AM on October 13, 2010

Single-player Level 3 is impossible for me. Between the fog and the huge map with multitudinous territory entry points, I just can't make it happen. Suddenly I see one player (invariably the one I wasn't worried about) swooping in on me from two sides at once, and at that point the player controls enough fog-hidden land that it's amassing scores of troops on every front and swiftly annihilates me. I like the game but wow, "easy" mode here is so much harder than the hardest "mode" with my real-life friends, playing actual Risk.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 10:33 AM on October 13, 2010

mudpuppie, I know exactly what you mean.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 11:57 AM on October 13, 2010

There were a couple of nice features, like the fog of war, and being turn-based it's a little more challenging than a Risk clone. But boy is this interface-heavy.

Dicewars had me sucked in for a long time as my ultimate mindless strategy game (if that makes any sense). I could literally bang away at game after game for an hour or more. But then I moved over to Hex Empire, and I'm pretty much stuck there, despite certain petty annoyances there (like always, always, always having to say "No, I am not new to the Hex Empire.") I tend to dislike at least a third of the generated maps, because I don't like playing to lose too often, and on hard mode anything with wide open plains everywhere is just suicide.

Anyway, I was pleased to see this diverge the map a bit from the Risk standard. It did make it more interesting to have to hold smaller-than-a-continent regions. I am not sure about the balance of play working as well, though.
posted by dhartung at 11:43 PM on October 13, 2010