Diablo II is a 2000 action role-playing game developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, and OS X. The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized and designed by David Brevik and Erich Schaefer, who, with Max Schaefer, acted as project leads on the game. The producers were Matthew Householder and Bill Roper. The game was developed over a three-year period, with a crunch time of a year and a half.
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, or shortened to Kingdoms, is a fantasy real-time strategy video game released on June 25, 1999, as a spin-off of Total Annihilation, and was the last title developed by Cavedog Entertainment. A tie-in book titled The Chronicles of Darien contained the storyline, rules, units, and other details. An expansion pack, The Iron Plague, was released in 2000.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a 2001 role-playing video game developed by Troika Games and published by Sierra On-Line for Microsoft Windows. The game's story takes place within a fantasy setting currently undergoing a transformation from its own Industrial Revolution, in which magic competes against technological gadgets, and focuses on the efforts of a zeppelin crash survivor to find out who attacked the vessel, ultimately discovering a plot by an ancient power to return to the world and cause chaos. The game, conducted from an isometric perspective and within an open world, offers players the opportunity to craft their protagonist with a variety of skills, including the option to be gifted in magic or use guns and gadgets to combat enemies, and complete quests in different ways.
Dominions II: The Ascension Wars is a 4X turn-based, computer strategy game. It was developed by Illwinter Game Design and published by Shrapnel Games. The game was released on November 14, 2003 in North America for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Master of Magic is a single-player, fantasy turn-based 4X strategy game in which the player plays as a wizard attempting to dominate two linked worlds. From a small settlement, the player manages resources, builds cities and armies, and researches spells, growing an empire and fighting the other wizards.
Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat is a single-player fantasy real-time tactics computer game based upon the Warhammer Fantasy Battle table-top game and miniatures. It was developed and published by Mindscape, and released in November 1995 for Microsoft Windows, and on PlayStation in November 1996. The game's story takes place within the Warhammer Fantasy world setting, and focuses on players managing a group of mercenaries, who take on work for various clients but become involved in stopping a plot by the Skaven. The game's main focus is on battles that feature a mixture of medieval warfare and fantasy elements, using a variety of units based upon those from within the Warhammer setting.
Birthright is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting that was first released by TSR in 1995. It is based on the continent of Cerilia on the world of Aebrynis, in which the players take on the role of the divinely-empowered rulers, with emphasis on the political rulership level of gameplay. The setting revolves around the concept of bloodlines: divine power gained by heroes and passed on to their descendants. Characters with a bloodline create an aura of command known as Regency, which is measured in the game using regency points or RP. Using regency, characters acquire a domain composed of provinces and holdings. The development of these domains is as much a part of the game as development of the characters. The game uses three-month domain turns to model actions of rulers over nations in much the same way as Dungeons & Dragons uses combat rounds to simulate time to model the characters' actions in battle. In 1996, Birthright won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement of 1995.
Mage: The Awakening is a tabletop role-playing game originally published by White Wolf Publishing on August 29, 2005, and is the third game in their Chronicles of Darkness series. The characters portrayed in this game are individuals able to bend or break the commonly accepted rules of reality to perform subtle or outlandish acts of magic. These characters are broadly referred to as "mages".
Conquest of Elysium II is the title of a computer game produced by the Illwinter Game Design. Conquest of Elysium is a fantasy turn-based strategy game. The game can be played with up to eight human players. Single player against computer is possible. The game can run on very old computers and has support for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris.
Magic: The Gathering – Battlegrounds is a real time strategy video game developed by Secret Level, Inc. and published by Atari It is based on Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, with many fundamental differences. The game is based on the creation of heroes and mages that summon forth powerful monsters, spells, and abilities to defeat the enemy duelist. Duelists learn new magical spells by completing the campaign, with more and more spell books becoming available as the player progresses. Each spell is separated into one of 5 colors, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Fantasy Empires is a role-playing fantasy wargame for MS-DOS made by Silicon Knights and published by Strategic Simulations in 1993. The game uses the Dungeons & Dragons license, and is set in the fictional world of Mystara.
Inindo: Way of the Ninja is a role-playing video game developed and published by Koei. Originally released for the PC8801SR, PC9801, MSX2 home computer and X68000, it was remade for the Super NES, which was also released in North America. The game is a fictional account of Japan's warring states period.
Tzar: The Burden of the Crown, also known as simply Tzar, is a real-time strategy game for Microsoft Windows published by TalonSoft and developed by the Bulgarian game developer company Haemimont Games. It received average reviews from critics.
Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders is a turn-based strategy game designed by Illwinter Game Design, in which up to fourteen "pretender gods" at a time each battle for global dominance. The game was followed by five sequels: Dominions II: The Ascension Wars, Dominions 3: The Awakening, Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension, Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith, and Dominions 6: Rise of the Pantokrator.
Magic: The Gathering is a video game published by MicroProse in March 1997 based on the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. It is often referred to as Shandalar after the plane of Shandalar, where the game takes place. The player must travel the land and fight random enemies to gain cards, and defeat five wizards representing the five colors. The player must prevent one color from gaining too much power, and defeat the planeswalker Arzakon, who has a deck of all five colors. Adventure and role-playing elements are present, including inventory, gold, towns, dungeons, random battles, and character progression in the form of new abilities and a higher life point total. An oversized version of Aswan Jaguar was included in the game box.
Forgotten Realms Adventures is an accessory for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the second edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The book, with product code TSR 2106, was published in 1990, and was written by Jeff Grubb and Ed Greenwood, with cover art by Clyde Caldwell and interior art by Steven Fabian, Ned Dameron, Larry Elmore, Caldwell, and Jeff Easley.
Sword of Aragon is both a turn-based strategy game and role-playing game developed and published in 1989 by Strategic Simulations. It is also considered to be of the 4X genre. Set in the fictional country Aragon, the games casts its protagonist as the duke of a city named Aladda. After assuming rule over the city and avenging his father's death, the protagonist embarks on a quest to unify the land through conquest. Accomplishing this goal entails developing cities, recruiting armies, and directing the troops on the fields of battle to victory. First published for MS-DOS, the game was ported to Amiga machines. Reception towards Sword of Aragon tended to be more positive than negative; reviewers called it an exciting game, but criticized its method of copy protection and cited problems with its documentation. There were also opinions that the game was more of a niche product, catering to hardcore strategists.
Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension is a fantasy turn-based strategy game created and published by Illwinter in 2013. It is the fourth game in the Dominions series, preceded by Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders, Dominions II: The Ascension Wars and Dominions 3: The Awakening and succeeded by Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith released in 2017. Dominions 4 was initially released in Desura and later at GamersGate. It went through the Greenlight process and was released on Steam in September 2013, which became the most popular platform for looking for multiplayer games and discussions after Desura shut down. Some active communities can also be found on Discord and 4chan.
SpellForce 3 is a 2017 video game developed by Grimlore Games and published by THQ Nordic. It was released for Microsoft Windows on 7 December 2017. SpellForce 3 is the third full and the ninth overall release in the SpellForce video game series. It is the first entry in the series since 2014's SpellForce 2: Demons of the Past. The plot serves as a prequel to the first game, depicting events that lead to the creation of The Circle, the group of mages whose actions were the basis for The Order of Dawn.
Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith is a 4X turn-based strategy game created and published by Illwinter Game Design in 2017. It is characterized by simplistic graphics, a functional UI, and deep gameplay, with a roster of over 80 playable nations able to interact with more than 900 unique spells, 400 magic items, and thousands of different unit types. Players take on the role of pretenders, immortals with vast magical powers who are venerated as gods by a given nation. Their goal is to spread their faith, eliminate rival Pretenders and ascend as supreme god of their world. Compared to its predecessor, Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension, Dominions 5 has been described as mainly a refinement, introducing real time combat for battles between armies, revising map generation, and a new system for blessings allowing the bonuses bestowed by gods to their nation to be customized.
