Ogre

Ogre is a strategy game from Origin Systems based on Steve Jackson's board game of the same name, set in a future dominated by giant walking tanks called Ogres. The player usually commands the defenders, who use smaller tanks, infantry, and anti-tank units to try to stop, or at least damage, the attacking Ogre before it reaches their command center. The progressive damage to the giant machine is reflected in the gameplay itself — as the Ogre loses weapons and mobility, the defenders' chances improve, so even a seemingly lost battle can turn around in the final turns. The defending player must also sacrifice some units purely to slow the Ogre's advance and buy time for concentrated fire from other squads.

On the Commodore 64, the game translates the board game original onto a hexagonal map with a turn-based system that preserves the tension of the original — the defender has more units at their disposal, but the Ogre is enormously tough and its weapons gradually wipe out the defense one unit at a time. The graphics are spare and functional, fully subordinated to the clarity of the tactical situation, which was a common approach for board game conversions at the time. The short length of a single match also makes it easy to replay with a different defender setup and try out a different tactic. The sound effects of gunfire and explosions are economical but expressive — every unit lost can be heard, and the player keenly senses how the balance of power on the map gradually shifts.

Ogre is valued above all for its fidelity to the original and for the purity of its concept — one large, uneven battle whose prospects for both sides shift from one turn to the next. On the Commodore 64, the game remains interesting as an example of how a successful board game design can be carried over to an eight-bit computer without losing its tension, especially since the Ogre concept later inspired several follow-up releases and expansions of the board game itself, to which the player community still returns today.

Why play: Worth trying for the purity of its one-big-uneven-battle concept and its fidelity to the board game, as an example of just how well a board game's tension can carry over to an eight-bit computer.