My first stop during this year’s Gen Con was The Continuum, a recently-released strategy  title that is heavily influenced by some of the more popular tabletop miniatures wargames.  Since it’s a wholly-electronic game, though, The Continuum is able to get much, much deeper than most tabletop skirmishers, something die-hard number crunchers are bound to eat up.

As a bonus, The Continuum is completely web-based.  This means there’s no lengthy download or continuous stream of patches.  Just log in, grab a starter pack and perhaps a few boosters, and begin building an army.  The Continuum is a collectable game, meaning players buy randomized boosters of units to increase their forces, although some of the top players on the leaderboards have managed some respectable achievements without purchasing a single booster.  Still, without a monthly fee, buying a few unit packs here and there can still be cheaper than most MMOs.

The game itself feels much like a tabletop wargame, which is a good thing.  Players choose a point total to determine the relative size of the forces they’re fielding, organize their units into squads and armies, and find a challenger.  There seemed to be quite a goodly amount of opponents to choose from, from all over the world, which is an impressive feat given the game has only recently launched.  An incredibly detailed matchmaking system is in place to insure players know exactly who they’re up against.

As armies battle, the units gain experience, allowing them to level up and upgrade their abilities for future fights.  Common units, while limited in their upgrade selection, still have an impressive amount of customizability.  Rare units, in comparison, have oodles of choices, allowing players to have incredibly individualized armies at their disposal.  In fact, there are tons of numbers and abilities to manage in The Continuum, and each and every one of them are right upfront for display.  Hard-core gamers will rejoice, but the casual gamer might be a little put off. 

There also seemed to be a very strong fan base at this point in the game’s early life, which the developers are embracing.  Although still early, if this level of fan and developer cooperation continues, The Continuum will be a great fit for dedicated strategy gamers, provided they enjoy the collectable-style game. 

Check out www.thecontinuum.com for more details.

My lovely wife, Grace, is tearing into an eight-pack of Crayola Twistables Crayons as I write this.  ("No sharpening so twist up the fun!")  Laying atop her crossed legs is a wirebound notebook of 4x4 quidrilled ruled graph paper, and she's about five or six pages in already.

She's drawing garden floorplans.  And I'm jealous.

Not because I want to repeatedly draw out the template to our yard of fruits-and-vegetables-and-wildflowers-yet-to-be myself (complete with RV parking, concrete slab for a back patio, and ambiguous un-fenced border with our neighbor), but because it's been well over a decade since a video game has even remotely required me to draw any maps for myself.  It had to have been King's Quest V (or maybe it was VI), as I seem to remember feverish frustration beading sweat on my forehead while I moseyed a desert wasteland in the West. 

Perhaps that's not the best example, as my "map" -- which was nothing more than a series of loosely-labeled rectangles depicting the number of screens I'd traveled up, down, left, and right -- was a tool borne of contempt. I was happy once I'd graphed out the look-alike screens, but I was mad (madmadmad) that I hadn't thought of it earlier in order to curb my mounting anger.

So then I come across Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People where the different locations Strong Bad teleports to on the map are rather arbitrary in their location.  So arbitrary, in fact, that Strong Bad -- once a new location is discovered -- allows the player to "draw in" the new location anywhere they want on the in-game map.  They're colorful little thumbnails, as if Strong Bad is carrying around his own eight-pack of Crayola Twistables Crayons; and the whimsical nature of the map-making harkens back to the days of King's Quest without necessarily harkening back to the retrospective frustrations hidden in those bygone halcyon days of Sierra adventure gaming.

Perhaps an adventure game will come along that, no, won't force you to draw in 120 screens of compass-bashing north-south-east-west rectangles, but might throw us '80s and early '90s adventure gamers a bone, letting us break out our rustic map-drawing skills once more for old times' sake.  I'd break out some graph paper for that.