Wargame Construction Set

1988Often a dream creeps into your mind: 'if only I could make my own strategy game'. But the skills just aren't there, and you have to make do with playing ready-made ones. A few games let you make your own scenarios, but even that only within limited bounds.

With SSI's long-awaited and much-longed-for Wargame Construction Set you can make your own strategy game without knowing diddly-squat about programming.

Once loading finishes, the program makes history: it plays music. Pretty dismal music, admittedly. After that you can choose between the editor and a one- or two-player game.

Naturally everybody picks the editor so they can get down to building their own battlefields. That's when the first bad point shows up: graphically the maps end up looking far too much like Nam, Field Of Fire and Panzer Grenadier. The game system, too, is lifted straight out of Nam. Having personally played an overdose of Nam, all I can do is moan. Even though Nam was voted strategy game of the year in the C&VG readers' poll, once you've played it a lot there's no shine left in it at all. That carries over to WCS as a lack of enthusiasm.

Of course, if you haven't flogged any of the games mentioned to death, WCS is top stuff and the game system is incredibly easy to learn, even for beginners.

Everything happens in its own phase. There's your own fire phase, your own movement phase, enemy fire, enemy movement, your own artillery support and so on. The phases are clearly shown at the top of the screen. The unit details, in turn, are marked along the bottom edge of the screen, and they too can easily be understood without using any brain cells.

The most important part of the program, the editor, is yet to be covered. Credit where credit is due, namely to the programmers. The editor has been made as easy to use as possible, and shaping the screen to your own purposes is quick work. There are lots of different terrain types, and plenty of other relevant props as well. There's open ground, forest, hills and peaks, water, all sorts of roads and junctions, minefields and ready-mined road (very hard to tell apart from the unmined kind), houses... Even a ready-destroyed bridge.

The map, however, is only 3/4 of the game itself. You have to come up with a believable backstory, the reasons for the conflict, and a name as well. Or is something still missing? Hhmmm. Why yes, the units. What lunatic would play a strategy game without units? Making them is easy too. The program comes with ready-made unit pictures, and you simply pick the ones you want. You can set all their attributes, from firepower on down.

Wargame Construction Set lives up to expectations in every respect. Now plenty of people have the chance to express themselves, and indulge their deepest desires, in making war games. The only drawback, as I mentioned, lies in how heavily the game routines and graphics are influenced by Nam. And that kills the interest for many, as I've noticed from people's reactions. Still, if you're thinking of buying it, think twice, because if you don't have the enthusiasm to make your own battlefields, then Field Of Fire, for example, is a much better buy. The eight ready-made scenarios notwithstanding.