Another multiplayer game that might interest Wesnoth fans...

[kupo]

Hi all,

Its been a long time (over 2 years) since I posted to the Wesnoth forums... I used to play this game a lot, and had even started work on a centaur expansion. Truth is I got seduced by a different multiplayer strategy game called Star Chamber. I don't know if its ok to discuss other games or not, but I didn't see anything against it in the guidelines so here goes. I'd like to state that Wesnoth is still the best free strategy game out there, and I still love to play the campaigns... the multiplayer just takes too long for me. If people are interested in hearing about another great multiplayer strategy game where games take an average of half an hour, read on. If people think this forum should only be used to discuss Wesnoth, I apologize you can skip the rest.

Star Chamber is a hybrid of a 4X strategy game like Wesnoth (though set in space more like Master of Orion) and a trading card game like Magic the Gathering. Since the game got bought by Sony the official client is PC only, but I'm a mac guy and I run a page that hosts the unofficial mac version of the client. It works great on an intel mac.

Star Chamber also contains single player campaigns which are fun, but the game is really designed to be multiplayer and it plays best as such. What makes the multiplayer so great is that turns take place simultaneously. People plan their turns at the same time during a "planning phase" and the results happen during the "execution phase." This fixes the biggest problem I have with Wesnoth multiplayer... waiting for the other guy to finish his turn. The other neat thing about SC multiplayer is that it has 3 victory conditions, military, cultural, or political. This makes strategy more complex as player is trying to win in one condition, they also have to try to not lose to the other two.

The trading card aspect of it scares some people off, but unlike most trading card games the board play makes it balanced enough so that a good strategist with a cheap commons deck will always beat a poor strategist with an expensive deck. You can get plenty out the game by only buying the $10 registration and just playing with the cards that comes with. Also the community gives away free common cards to dedicated players.

The only problem with Star Chamber is that the community is very small. The game was owned by a small indy developer that then got bought by Sony Online Entertainment. Sony makes all its money off of big MMORPGs like Everquest. Star Chamber is small potatoes to them, so they refuse to put any money into promoting our game and expanding our community. This has forced us SC players to resort to grass roots promoting on forums for other games we enjoy. Hence this post.

Starchamber is a great relatively cheap strategy game, and the best choice for a short yet intense multiplayer experience I have encountered. Please forgive me Wesnoth developers for promoting another game on your forums. I still love Wesnoth and appreciate all your hard work.

If you are interested in trying SC, the official website (with the PC client) of Star Chamber is:

http://starchamber.station.sony.com/

The mac client can be found here:

http://homepage.mac.com/mattness/starchamber/

My name over in the Star Chamber world is mattness. I hope to see a few of you there.

-cheers,

kupo(mattness)

Edit:

A good review of the game can be found here:

http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=661

[HomerJ]

Sorry, not interested, I never play any game that I have to pay for.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Daxam]

If I want to play TCG, I'd play MoTG.

At least the cards can be sold for real money (given the huge pool of players)

I gave up becuase all the expansions sucked my money into a blackhole that I needed to go to MoTG Anonymous.

[appleide]

That reminds me... I got like $300 worth of MTG cards I want to sell for $$...