Chris Crawford on Game Design

The Battle Subgame

I had no intention of turning Excalibur into a strategy wargame, so I kept the battle scene quite simple. There was no terrain, just a patch of bare ground with the units from opposing sides drawn up in two battle lines facing each other. Each unit was depicted by a shield, using the same crests showing up in the Gossip display. The battle was fought in real time, with units moving at high resolution; that is, they didn't jump from square to square, but instead oozed along at a deliberate pace. The player controlled each unit by clicking on it and designating an objective toward which that unit should move. When a unit attempted to move into a location already occupied by an opposing unit, it instead attacked that unit. Several ...