Stratego

Stratego - "Desktop" strategy (although to be honest - much closer to the puzzle), so to speak, a variant of Capture the Flag. The task is to capture the territory of the opponent in “parts”. The ultimate goal is to capture the enemy's flag and keep your own.

Initially, forty such "pieces" of land are under our control (they look like cells marked on the playing field with squares of "our" color), five bombs and nine types of soldiers placed on these squares (all of them correspond to any military ranks, the highest - "marshal", lower - "scout"). The game is turn-based, in one move each military unit (except the weakest - the "scouts": they can move as many cells as they like) can only move one cell. Bombs cannot be moved, but they are extremely dangerous - any soldiers are blown up on them, with the exception of sappers. Also in the game there is a cell occupied by the flag of the army. The flag cannot be moved, its capture, as already mentioned, automatically brings victory. In addition to the troops themselves, there are also special "parts" - spies and the aforementioned sappers. The spy is interesting in that, as such, he is completely defenseless, but if he attacks the enemy marshal first, he always kills him.

When we make our move to the cell occupied by the enemy (that is, already marked with “not our” color), the battle begins, the one with the stronger unit always wins (that is, if, for example, “general” and “marshal” grabbed then the “marshal” will always win, regardless of who attacked first). There is no way to know which unit is on the attacked square of the enemy until we attacked it, so there is a rather significant element of randomness in the game. The square with the defeated military unit is "removed" from the game (the square disappears). If units of equal rank converge, both of them are “removed”. The goal is to destroy all enemy units in this way, or most of them, reaching the enemy flag.

It is pleasant to note that the interface in this game is very clear and “friendly”. A scoreboard is located in the upper right part of the screen, which helps to keep track of all current game events (who is walking now, what move is in a row, how many soldiers are left in the battle, and so on). It's simply not worth talking about the graphics - in such games it does not become outdated, although one cannot fail to mention the excellently drawn backgrounds on which our bloodless battles take place (they can be chosen from a small set). The verdict - although largely based on chance, it is still a very attractive "strategy-puzzle" game.