Voyager

[Honolulu Blue]

As I've grown older, I have slowly moved away from grand strategy games (such as the Civ and Imperialism series) that can take 10-20 hours to complete, and sometimes several hours before you find yourself in a position where you can't win. I have moved toward quick strategy games that can be finished in an hour or two - or even less. A quick list of such games includes: History of the World, Gold of the Americas, Gazillionaire, Strange Adventures in Inner Space, and Car Thief.

Let's add another one to this list... Voyager.

Voyager is a fast moving game from Derek of Stormcloud Creations, who posts here occasionally. To summarize the gameplay briefly: You start with 20 essence (hit points), 50 karma (spell points), and 5 cards with creatures on them. During each turn, there is a choice of 2 to 5 sub-regions to go - each with varying amounts of danger, rewards, and types of events. Sometimes there's nothing, sometimes there's a quest available to go on (for gold, if you succeed), sometimes a wizard will offer you a game of chance (to win gold), and sometimes there's a fight.

Resolving a fight is easy. Each creature card has a power number and a number for karma use. You go first, then the computer. You can play up to 5 cards and the highest power rating, after everything is adjusted for, wins. Wins yield treasure (maybe), losses eat into your essence.

The 10th and last turn is special, since it's always a fight, the computer always has 4 cards available, and there's always treasure available at the end. You have to win the last fight to keep the gold you've accumulated and be recorded on the local and/or Internet scoreboard.

Games go by in 5-10 minutes, so you can play a bunch of them in a few hours' time. You might do just that, because I find that this game has addictive qualities; I'm always trying to play one more game to try to move up the charts.

The graphics, music, and sound, while pleasing, are certainly not state-of-the-art.

I realize this is not a game for all tastes. It's not a very deep or involved game, and there is lots of luck involved (it does tend to even out over bunches of games, but still). But if you're looking for a quick and fun strategy game, you can do worse than to look here. Stormcloud's site is at http://www.stormcloudcreations.com, where you can find the demo, the high score list (check out that fine fellow at #1 ), and other information.