Four day demo strategy game -- Galcon.

Galcon is a space strategy game, you must use your ships to capture planets and ultimately take over the galaxy.
As strategy games go, Galcon is very simple, there is just one type of spaceship and these are produced automatically by the planets you control, larger planets produce more ships and more ships enable you to conquer more planets.

Fleets of spaceships are controlled by either drag & drop, or by clicking. Having a mouse wheel gives you a definite advantage, as it allows you to quickly control the amount of ships you commit to an action.

In the four day demo version, you are limited to one single player mission (full version has fifteen) against the computer, but the distribution of planets changes with each mission, making each game different. You can also play online against other humans.

Visually Galcon is quite exciting, with hordes of tiny ships, moving back and forth across space, attacking planets. It's also very easy to see the condition of your empire, with clear colour coding and ship amounts.

I found the computer opponent to be reasonably good, but its tactics are limited and, when it goes for an all out attack you can easily defeat it. When it takes a more balanced attack/defence posture, it is a better opponent.
But no computer opponent can compare with playing against human opponents and the online game is where Galcon really shines, where you can battle against multiple enemies.
Note: The online system works fine on 56k dialup.

There is a simple tutorial included with the game, but a more extensive help is available online and if you are having problems, the game forum can help, it also has some helpful hints on tactics.

Overall I found Galcon pretty good fun, but I wont be purchasing the full version ($19.95), as it was a bit too simple for my tastes, I prefer the graphically inferior, but tactically superior Pax Galaxia.
But the demo is well worth trying and who knows you may become addicted (make sure you try some online battles).

Four day demo($19.95 to buy) -- Download size 5Mb -- Windows, MacOSX, Linux

http://www.imitationpickles.org/galcon/index.html

Rob Goldfish Web Site

Copyright 2007 Rob Goldfish.