Pioneers of Aethora
From AethoraWiki
About Pioneers of Aethora
Pioneers of Aethora is a web-based turn-based strategy role-playing game - a PBBG, if you will. Feel free to call it a lame attempt at a rip-off of Final Fantasy Tactics, Might and Magic, Battle for Wesnoth, etc, etc. Well, those are some influences, anyway. Also, it's web-based, so ... there.
I started writing this several months ago and shelved it many times, but was re-inspired when I read an article in Wired about Kingdom of Loathing. If you've never heard of it, check it out - it's a web-based RPG, albeit a satirical one. Actually, it's pretty hilarious. I remember checking it out a couple years ago, but the article in Wired pointed out how it started out as one guy doing it as a kind of hobby, and now they actually have a handful of employees.
Kingdom of Loathing was described as a "coffee-break game", and I really want to stick Aethora in that category. I like the idea of a game that you can pop into for a few minutes, play a little, and walk away from at any time. The combat system in Pioneers of Aethora is completely turn-based, and because of that, you can walk away from the game in the middle of a battle, go do something else for a while, walk up to another computer, log in, and pick up where you left off.
The game is in an early state, but it's growing, and it's fun. It's well tested in Firefox, and should work well in Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Safari. It's playable in other browsers, but may not be perfect. Specifically, IE6 lacks alpha transparency support, and so some things will look funny (seriously, if you really like Internet Explorer, please, for the sake of web developers everywhere, upgrade to IE7. Even better, go get Firefox or Opera. Heck, they even have Safari for Windows now). The only requirement for playing the game is that you need to have javascript turned on (if you've never explicitly turned it off, then you're ok). The only recommendation is that you have a decent resolution - 1024x768 is ok, but bigger than that would be better (ideally, 1280x1024 would be nice, or if you have widescreen, then 1200x800 or higher).
If you want to read more about gameplay, check out Help Me!. Other than that, go register and log into http://aethora.com.
Have fun!
