Stargate Online

Stargate Online is a Czech browser game based on the Stargate TV series, and it's one of the few homegrown representatives of a genre that, in the second half of the 2000s, pulled in thousands of players — text-based MMOs, played in small pieces and, above all, over the long term.

The principle is typical for this kind of game. You log in, set what should be built or where an expedition should be sent, close the window, and come back a few hours later. Progress is slow, built on alliances with other players and on who lasts longer. The show's setting supplies the framework: gates, planets, alien races, and technology research.

What makes it interesting above all is that it was made in the Czech Republic and never came out in any other language version, so unlike Travian or OGame, it wasn't a localization of a foreign title but a domestic production for domestic players. Projects exactly like this shaped the Czech online scene at a time when gaming websites were still learning what a community even was.

Why play it: A homegrown representative of text-based MMOs from an era when you played in a browser window between tasks — and one of the few Czech games of its kind with its own Wikipedia entry.