Ah... Iron Dragon

For the first time in four years (no exaggeration) I fired up "Rail Empires: Iron Dragon" last night. Some of you may recall that this is the computer game that I made with Nick and John in 1999 and 2000. It's an adaptation of the Mayfair board game "Iron Dragon", one in the series of games affectionately called "crayon rails", because you draw railroad lines with crayons on a plasticized hex map surface.

For what it is, RE:ID has withstood the ravages of time fairly well. John's map art, animations, and card art are all still, in my opinion, absolutely gorgeous, and more than half the reason for playing the computer version of the game. The other half is the helpful user interface and cheesy sound effects that make playing on the PC quite a bit more fun than the real life version. Unfortunately, neither the AI nor the network play quite reached the same levels, but nonethelss the game has made a number of gamers happy and put some tiny amount of royalty in our pockets. You can still get it, or just check out more screenshots, at www.irondragon.org.

A sample of the lovely map art (check out the compass in the upper-right corner):

Ha! I forgot we put easter egg "cards" of the developers into the title screen! This is me as cel art, compliments of John:

I've been thinking a lot more lately about doing another game. Upon reflection, there were a number of things about the Iron Dragon game itself that made it not the best candidate for being a computer game. Among them:

1. A little too long to play for this sort of game (90-120 minutes). A 30-60 minute game would have been better.

2. The fine-scale hex map. The world is about 60 hexes wide, it's a bit too much detail to deal with effectively through a computer display viewport. Consider instead how much less there is to see and deal with in games such as Ra, Acquire, or Settlers of Catan.

3. It's a race game with not enough inter-player dynamic. More than in your typical game of this type, you tend to shut out what the other players are doing and just focus on your own little world. There should be more interplay to make it worth playing against other people.

4. The whole game is a little plodding. There are but a few surprises with the event cards, but mostly it's a slow strategic grind to the finish with no big, dramatic tactics or risks by which to distinguish or humiliate yourself.

5. Double-edged license. Sure, Iron Dragon fans checked out and bought RE:ID, but I imagine few others really "got" it. Might have been better off making a brand new and more accessible game idea, and building up the fan base from zero.

Considering all that, I think the team made a smashing go at overcoming these limitations.

My "next" game, whenever that is, will be an original idea, drawing heavily from my experiences with the whole Euro-Strat game style. Starting to mull ideas now, but on the technical side, it's still the puzzle game first to do, for practice and experience.