Diskonia

Inspired by the Indian game of Carrom, Diskonia is a board-game esque strategy game. Pretty unique and cool, I liked it at first glance, but I hear a lot of people don’t like it very much and find it tedious. We’ll see what you think as I explain it, though!

Diskonia

In Lords of Diskonia, you have a campaign of ten levels. Each level has a map, which is just paths, and you and your opponent take turns drawing out a path on these lines. They start very simple, like this, and then get more complex in the later levels. You cannot go backwards on your own line, and if the opponent reaches you or your line, combat happens. There’s powerups and resources to grab on the map, and taverns where you can recruit units for battle.

Diskonia

Once your troops meet, battle begins. You two take turns flicking disks at each other, deciding angle and strength of the flick. Units have unique stats and abilities, as well. A knight has good health but bad offense, but is cheap. An archer can only attack traditionally once, but uses a crystal to shoot a tiny powerup arrow. The Ogre hits hard and stuns, but can only attack once, and can’t go very far cause it’s so big. Things like that. There’s also sand mechanics, water traps which will instantly kill any unit, the health wells from Valbrace return, healing and overhealing your units. If you bounce an enemy into your units, like by pincering them, you can deal more damage. Or you can make them bounce into each OTHER, which hurts them both. The game boils down to good aiming, power management, and being able to get good trick shots. It’s a lot like Pool, in that way.

But a lot like computer simulations of Pool, the AI is, of course, infallible. A good AI can make perfect shots every time to hit your units a bunch. So it seems like, in this game, they kind of just roll before going if they’ll Fuck Up and throw a unit into the water, or just miss a shot. But as you go on, the AI gets NASTY with it. It never really understands the dangers of water though, so that’s a good strategy to play around.

While the concept is super cool and I ended up liking it quite a bit, I cannot deny the game is very slow paced, and maybe overstays its welcome. The strategy element of the world map falls a bit flat, and while the combat is fun, it’s a bit samey. Still, a very fun game.

…Okay, lore time. Inside the game is a hidden message that you can find… “HOW FAR IN THE FUTURE ARE YOU READING THIS?”. Huh, that’s ominous. I wonder what that’s all about? Well, during this time at UFOSoft, there were some rumors around the office. Rumors that these games they were making weren’t actually being sold. They weren’t being released, but instead were being shipped off and sealed somewhere. But for what purpose? We shall see, in time.

7.5/10