TIGSource: Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege

Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege

Jordan Magnuson — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:46:00 +0000

One of my all time favorite “Click” games. You play the White Wizard, residing in a medieval fantasy fortress where you create and unleash hordes of minions onto a 2D battlefield with one goal in mind: defeat the warlord across the way. If you ever played Three-Sixty Pacific’s Armor Alley, you’ll find that the premise is similar, but this game might just be better than its classic counterpart.

The mechanics are fairly simple: use the keyboard to move blocks of resources around to form combinations which produce troops, then unleash those troops to the battlefield where they fight automatically as best they can. The game blends strategy, tactics, and dexterity in a really interesting way.

On the strategic level you will have to decide which Warlord to play (each has their strengths and weaknesses), and what your general plan of unit production is going to be: a cheap mix of foot soldiers and archers, with an occasional battering ram thrown in? Or perhaps you will rely on more advanced technology and an air based assault? Or how about trying to infect your opponent’s troops with the Black Plague?

On the tactics level you’ve got to respond to the situation at hand, both in terms of the resources you have in front of you, and the current state of the battlefield.

Finally, on the dexterity level… well, the game is played in freakin’ realtime, and you better get good at moving those blocks of resources around!

Siege has a couple of flaws, like its tiny 320×200 resolution and some imbalances that I’ll let you discover, but these small detriments are small next to the fun of madly mixing resources and watching your miniature troops fight it out to the death in front of you, with your arch-nemesis pounding away on the keyboard beside you.

The game supports human vs. computer and human vs. human play. I don’t have to tell you which is better.

Download Siege for free from WinSite (1.35 MB).

P.S. You may need to run the game in Windows 95 compatibility mode; and remember to copy cncs32.dll to your system32 directory if the game doesn’t work.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Demicol

Thu, 01 May 2008 07:47:01 +0000

There was a similiar game to this I played once, but before the game you made your own fortess from pieces falling out from the sky and you could combine them like in Tetris. Anyone know what I’m talking about?

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Beau

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:37:04 +0000

Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s an old design doc. But if you know any one who’s a badass coder than it’d be cool to see it come to life. And I am not talking click coding crap. This badboy would need the full 3d treatment. It’d probably need a bit of tweaking in the long run, because truth be told I changed a lot of the mechanics in 2 to make it a much more indepth strategy game. It’d still be very frantic, but it’d incorporate a lot of moderation and sacrificing some power for more in the long run.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Jordan

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:41:45 +0000

@Beau: Always fun to see the developers in here. I too would be really interested in seeing that old design doc!

@Dacke: Thanks for sharing!

Regarding playing the game for the first time, and teaching new players, I find a good strategy is simply to learn 2-3 units per play session (fewer as you advance) and just concentrate on those… the memorization aspect seems really overwhelming if you consider all the units at once, but it is quite possible to play the game and have fun using as few as 3 units, and once you have those memorized (which you will after one session) getting 2-3 more is easy, and so on…

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Cutman3030

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:21:14 +0000

Battering Rams are pretty nifty too. I usually send one of those out before a trio of knights then soldiers.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Beau

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:40:57 +0000

Yeah. Computer doesn’t do much thinking. Golems and Dragons work really well against them, but pretty poorly against other players. Archers or Catapult > Dragon. I personally think best strategy is a knight rush. All the more so if you get a necromancer on the field.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Cutman3030

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:20:58 +0000

I just memorized the Golem and Dragon ones and I haven’t lost yet.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Ynitsed

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:04:37 +0000

This is one of the Fallen Angel’s production that I’ve been searching for a long time, the other one is the violent Factor X but i haven’t found a site where you can download. Game Hippo used to have it but the link is broken for a long time. Anyway, this one here is a kepper. A true gem.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Dacke

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:43:11 +0000

Seems like an awesome game, but it might be hard to find a friend to play with, seeing how you have to memorize all the units. I made this little image to print out as a simple memory-aid, allowing for more fluent game play and thought it might be a good thing to share! http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2899/siegebookld7.png

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Sergio

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:17:32 +0000

I’d love to see this design doc!

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Cutman3030

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:11:47 +0000

Beau, make it! Make it you beautiful person you.

With online play!

I’ll pay you money to make it! Honestly, I will.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Beau

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:26:28 +0000

Whoa! Someone bothered to remember good ol Siege. >.> There was a real sequel in the works, but I lost my programmer (it was going to be a lot closer to a real game and I needed someone who could do online play / make a more stable engine) I still have the cool ol design document lying around!

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by pkt-zer0

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:01:07 +0000

Okay, so how do I make this things fullscreen? I mean, fullscreen as in “NOT 320x240 centered in 640x480 with huge black borders” fullscreen.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Lim-Dul

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:17:08 +0000

@Jaeger: Tab = select ` = clear tiles 1 = action RDFG replace the arrow keys

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Raymond

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:18:33 +0000

I miss Fallen Angel dearly. Those were my favorite freeware games, about three or four years ago.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Jaeger

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:57:11 +0000

Does anyone mind telling me what the controls are for the second player? Maybe it’s just because I’m on a laptop, but I can’t figure them out for the life of me.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Lim-Dul

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:52:43 +0000

The Underside?

Ooops - wrong topic.

runs away ;-)

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by sektor666

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:29:41 +0000

does anyone remember the name of this game’s “sequel”? and by sequel i mean the exact ripoff of this game that somebody made, with extra units tossed in

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Gurrah

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:03:33 +0000

I always loved Siege! But even thought the gameplay is superb, the best part of it is the tutorial, the accompanying music and the hilarious narrator!

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Dusty Spur

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:05:44 +0000

ohfgod

I guess I should have paid attention to what combinations made what units. I was mostly just moving random crap together. I still won though~

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Kinten

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:38:23 +0000

Yes!! I’ve been looking for this game for so long! I had forgot the name though. Thank you!

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Radnom

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:25:11 +0000

Only problem with multiplayer is that most of the time the other person can’t be bothered memorising the blueprints either. And even if they can they’ll get bored because you’ll have memorized more by the time they come over and play against you so it’s rarely a fair match.

I do remember playing this many years ago :D

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by MisterX

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:12:43 +0000

I just came across this game recently. I thought the concept was pretty nice but I really couldn’t be bothered to memorize dozens of different “blueprints” for all the units. I guess you don’t have to do so per se, as you may be able to win by only using 3 units as well as using them all, yet this was still a little intimidating. And then again there’s nobody I could play this with and I also suppose multiplayer is the only way this can be great fun.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Cutman3030

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:25:34 +0000

Needs more online play, but phew, what an awesome game.

"Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege" by Sergio

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:34:09 +0000

I remember this… there was supposed to be a sequel!