The Horde

The Horde is a hybrid of strategy and action in which the player defends a village against a horde of ravenous creatures. The 3DO version from 1994 is famous especially for its live-action segments, in which the lead character Chauncey was played by Kirk Cameron — between rounds, a court comedy unfolds about promotion, intrigue, and an ungrateful monarch, filmed with a straight face and a B-movie budget. The narrative frame intersects with the gameplay: what happens in a scene affects what land and what options you're given.

Mechanically, two layers alternate. Between waves of attacks, the player manages resources: buying walls, ditches, towers, and traps and placing them around the property to delay the creatures as long as possible and protect villagers and livestock. When an attack begins, the game switches to isometric action, where Chauncey personally finishes off with his sword whatever the defenses failed to stop. Tension arises because preparation and combat depend on each other — a badly placed wall shows up a minute later, when the creatures break through exactly where you didn't want them to. Money for defense, meanwhile, comes from how much the village produces each season, so every lost cottage counts twice. Difficulty rises steadily, and enemies multiply faster than money does.

Technically, the game combined drawn environments with digitized actors and was among the titles the 3DO used to show off the merging of film and game. The loud, exaggerated comedy feels kitschy today, but that's exactly what gives it its period flavor. At the time, The Horde was received warmly and considered one of the few successful hybrids of base-defense and action; its scheme of build a trap, then go fight foreshadows the later wave of tower-defense-style games. Today it's short, easy to grasp, and unexpectedly addictive — and the live-action content works as a bonus worth watching, both for how unseriously the creators took themselves and how confidently they stitched the whole thing together.