the blog
Notes from the margin
Why I made this, what I was trying to get back, and a certain amount of unresolved feeling about the 1990s real-time strategy game.
Nothing ever replaced Command & Conquer, and I have been looking for twenty years
The genre split into esports and 4X, and the thirty-minute base-building game in the middle quietly stopped being made.
Why my RTS is stickmen drawn on graph paper
Pixel-art nostalgia is a trap. What marker pen on squared paper gets you that 1995 khaki cannot.
Dune II invented the RTS, and then everyone forgot the interesting part
The 1992 game that fixed the template. Most of it survived; the best mechanic in it mostly did not.
What Red Alert got right that nobody copies
A rigorous simulation with total nonsense on top, played completely straight. Why almost nobody manages it.
Reading about it is slower than playing it.
TANKS runs in this browser tab. No download, no account, no launcher.