Avianos

This is one of the most out there games of the entire collection, just showing that despite LX Systems not really having much commercial success in this period, they were making some REALLY out there and fascinating games. And, frankly, EXTREMELY uncommercial. Fuckin’ look at this thing.

This is also the first game in a bit with some new members of the crew, joining the team with the start of 1985. Y’all, meet Ester Mac and Shayn North. Ester is a programmer, and did the AI here, and Shayn is a graphics guy. We’ve also got KC Levin on testing, and Smolski’s nephew, Boby Smolski, who helped with dinosaur fun facts around the office. And we’ve also got one additional member of the crew, one of my personal favorite members of staff: Joy Akebi. Joy Akebi was brought on to help with sound and music, which makes sense cause it was just Petters before now, though it’s funny it was THIS game cause it doesn’t have much sound. Joy Akebi will become a major force of good in the office, in my opinion, and a lot of great ideas and choices can be directly attributed to her input.

The office is getting pretty packed! It’s also worth noting that of the 10 different staff members, 4 are women. That’s unheard of. I mean, there were LOTS of women in tech in like the 50s 60s and 70s, but they had pretty much been kicked out of the profession by men by that point. LX Systems was a very progressive studio, in a lot of ways.

Avianos

Avianos is a 4x game. In 1985. It’s the far future, Humans blew each other the fuck up, and now it’s the reign of the birds. But they’re going down the same dark path as the mammals, and waging war, worshipping ancient Dinosaur gods. In this 4X strategy game, your goal on each map is to keep and hold 4 or more fortresses. You do this by praying to your gods, which each do three things when you pray to them. These things range from moving units to another square, taking ownership of it, gathering resources based on your buildings, building new buildings, recruiting units, or using magic spells like freezing enemy units or spying on how many units are in a space. Every two times you worship an ancestor, their favori will increase, allowing you to upgrade one of their three actions to a better form. This results in a LOT of variance and strategy.

Seriously, this game is pretty deep, and I bet multiplayer is WICKED.

Avianos

When your units collide, the game enters an auto-combat mode. The only things you can tell your units to do are to attack, hold, run, or destroy your own buildings if you know you’re going to lose and don’t want the enemy taking it. It’s shockingly deep. A lot of my strategy WAS just to build a Giant Murderball, but hey, what works works, y’know? There’s a lot of good strategies that work.

This game is some wicked fun, and is SUPER interesting. But also very intimidating, and you’ll have NO clue what you’re doing at first. It’s like a little boardgame more than a video game, but hey. I like board games. Prolly not for everyone, but really cool.

8.5/10