Simple Game Reviews

An unconnected city at the hardest difficulty level can mean trouble

Oasis is an inventive game that mixes the depth of turn-based strategy games such as Civilization with the simplicity of a puzzle game like Minesweeper.

I first heard of Oasis when it was awarded the prestigious Innovation in Game Design prize at the Independent Games Festival in 2004. I was a bit skeptical of the idea of a “casual” strategy game at first, but I quickly realized that the idea works, and it works really well.

Setting: You play as a pharaoh in Ancient Egypt who must protect his people against barbarians.

Gameplay: Each level starts in a completely unexplored land that will soon be attacked by barbarians. The objective is to build a strong enough kingdom that will be able to defeat the barbarians, but you only have 85 turns to do so. At each turn you have to decide between a set of actions such as exploring a new part of the land, sending some of your people to work in the mines to discover new technologies, or building a road to connect your cities. The tutorial is well done and will teach you what each action does.

The barbarians have destroyed one of my cities :(

The exploration of the land will remind you of Minesweeper since revealing a square of the land gives hints as to what stands on the near-by squares. For example a green square means a city resides next to it. These hints help you decide what your next steps should be.

The difficulty of the game is in finding out what the best actions are. What part of the land should I explore next? Should I connect my cities first? Or should I try to discover the mines before? How many villagers should work in the mines? As you slowly figure out the answers to these questions, the difficulty also increases, as more and more barbarians attack you. This is also a strong point of the game: the different difficulty settings are well gauged and the game will prove a challenge even after hours of playing thanks to the hardest difficulty settings.

Personal opinion: I usually stay away from strategy games as I prefer simpler games, but Oasis really got me hooked. I kept playing and really enjoyed it, until I reached a point where I didn’t have to think much about what to do at each turn: the game simply became too mechanical for me. But that was after many, many hours of play time. Oasis is a very original game and I highly recommend it.

Play Oasis:
Download the demo for Windows.
Order the full version.

(5 votes, average: 4.4 out of 5)

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