Lode Wars

Lode Wars was intended as a tactical, goal-oriented team game, in which players took on the role of alien miners in a whimsical future setting. Development was halted in January of 2003 following a hard drive crash with a faulty back-up, and an attempt was made to rebuild the game from scratch to streamline the game's interior workings and correct developmental oversights, with the hopes of bringing the game to eventual completion.

In the year and a half I've been struggling to get the rebuilt version off the ground while working a day job to fund my college enrollment, however, it has become generally apparent that there is not actually much interest in Lode Wars in spite of continued play. Few attempts are made to utilize even the few basic tactical resources included in the half-finished game; the goal of attempting to out-collect the other teams was eschewed as being secondary to self-enrichment; teammates were seen as rivals at best, nuisances or even targets at worst, but virtually never as allies. In short, while the game includes (largely unintentionally) some features which appeal to many players, no players are actually interested in the actual game of Lode Wars; what they really want is a much different game that has some superficial similarities. Lode Wars includes, for example, some measure of "leveling" and saved stockpiles of resources, but it was never about these features; the comparatively large role of these in the game came about not because it was originally designed that way but because I gradually made more and more concessions to players begging for more RPG-style play, until ranks that were originally mostly for prestige and bragging rights came to dominate the gameplay itself. But ultimately, regardless of what players want Lode Wars to be, that's not what it is, and I cannot devote any more of my limited development time twisting my brainchild into something it isn't.

I still believe in the core concept of Lode Wars: a thinking man's action game, accessible enough to be enjoyed for its own simple pleasures but detailed and complex enough to keep each game interesting. Ultimately, however, I seem alone in this faith; all suggestions to bring the game more in line with this concept have been met with attitudes varying from rejection to hostility. The game has become too far removed from itself; it cannot go back to what it was supposed to be, nor can it continue any further into what it has become. Maybe someday I'll be able to create a game that can live up to this concept and be truly worthy of Lode Wars' name; in the meantime, however, no updates are forthcoming, and the game remains "as is." All remaining Lode Wars servers represent the personal servers of individual players; their administration is up to their respective hosts, and I have nothing to do with the running of any of these.