Notes on Slay

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Slay is what happens if you take a strategy game along the lines of Civ or Wesnoth or Homm3 and remove features until the absolute minimum is left.

Which brings me to one of my pet-peeves.  A lot of people, including game reviewers, say 'depth' when they mean 'breadth'.  "This game only has one button?  Where's the depth?" Breadth usually comes from adding verbs, things to choose from, things that make nice bullet points in your marketing materials;  depth comes when the small number of verbs you have, combined, create their own variation.  Go is a game with almost no breadth - there's only one type of unit - and insane depth.  Your typical fighting game with a hundred moves, only one of which you use because it's an exploit, is the opposite.

Breadth can be the enemy of depth.  Anytime you give a player a new option to choose from you run the risk that you've created an exploit that makes all your other choices meaningless.

Slay is an old game - been around since Treyarch was half-a-dozen guys in a condo in Venice - and I didn't think too much of it back then, because it seemed too easy.  You had to really look to find one of the randomly generated countries that was challenging.  Well, maybe back then I had the AI set on a low level and didn't realize it, or maybe I've gotten stupider, or maybe Sean O'Connor has been working on the AI over the last ten years, because now it's pretty tough to beat.  I just managed to claw my way to victory on one of the small islands, and there's a whole lot left.

That said, the AI isn't on par with your typical chess AI.  You can leave a weak unit out where a stronger unit can get him, or lower your defenses, as bait, and then cut the strong unit's support.  Which is terribly satisfying!  If the AI was better, the game might be less fun...almost like the AI in a stealth game.

http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/slay.html

Comments

[Darius K.]

Wow, what a great game! Thanks for pointing me to it. I am very tempted to buy Slay (particularly on the Palm), but sadly, $20 just seems a little too steep.

[Pat O]

Slay is a great game. I think this is because it is so simple. I live in a world where 14hour miniature combat is no longer even imaginable. I do not have 15 hours to spend on a game, I play once or twice a week for 1/2 hour. Slay is a game that can be played twice in that timeframe. I would like to see more games like it. So much so that I am thinking about creating an engine for simple/tactical turn style hexmap war games (hence smallwarz.org). Unfortunately I really don't have the time to put into it. But yes, I think Slay is one of my favorite games. He has other games that are pretty good too, certainly worth a look.

Pat O

[george]

Sean O'Conner does have some great games, including one of my all-time favorites, Firefight!. He seems to have done well in carving out a small niche for himself with these kinds of games.

[Aaron]

Nice. Your statement on breadth vs. depth is exactly what I've been saying for years. We got trashed on Marvel Nemesis for that, when we really should have just been trashed for not documenting any of the depth in the manual or in the game. You really just had to know what combinations were there in order to do them.

[Aaron]

Nice. Your statement on breadth vs. depth is exactly what I've been saying for years. We got trashed on Marvel Nemesis for that, when we really should have just been trashed for not documenting any of the depth in the manual or in the game. You really just had to know what combinations were there in order to do them.

[Colm]

I've been playing Slay for a couple of years off and on.

Easily the best (or worst if you think spending time playing games on the computer is a waste of time...) £10 I've ever spent.

[allangering]

Great!! Interesting games. Thanks for sharing. I am fond of these kind of games.
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