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About Our Games

Our Unique Games

We own a number of proprietary multi-player games that provide a challenging arena for our players to compete against one another. Most of our games are designed to be slow, turn-based strategy games in which you have plenty of time to plan and prepare each turn, rather than the highly-interactive and fast-paced games that are often popular elsewhere on the web.

The following game is currently available for play:

Our next game is currently being re-developed for the web:

The rest of these games are planned for the future (in the order we'd like to release them):

(All of the above games were originally designed for Play-by-Mail and require work before they can be run over the web.)

Common and Public-domain Games

We'll also be hosting a number of other games that are commonly known or in the public domain. This provides additional outlets for our players that are already playing in our proprietary games and would like some additional diversions to occupy their remaining spare time.

This game is currently being developed for the web:

These games are planned for the future:

Our Unique Games

Galac-Tac

Cartoon of spaceship coming out of wormhole into trouble

Tell me
more about
Galac‑Tac!

“You adjust your uniform and stare into the mirror. Outside, reporters are clamoring for news. Your aide signals that it's almost time. Two fortnights ago, you ordered the flagship Impervious to assault the dreaded Fifth Reich home system. You stripped the defenses of every production center within range… Three of those systems fell to the Fifth Reich! Now your people demand to know what happened. You smile, knowing this was just the knee jerk reaction of a dying empire. Soon you must decide on your next target. But for now, the glory! You signal your aide and walk toward the door.”

Galac-Tac is a single unit level, science fiction war game. 10 to 15 players start equally. Turns are processed on any schedule the players agree to and all players move simultaneously. Each game is computer generated, no two games are alike. You can design your own ships. Only your economic and military decisions will decide your fate in the game.

A player-created Windows program (The GTac Assistant) is available for off-line assistance in play. Players with knowledge of programming are also encouraged to write and publish their own assistants as well.

You may also wish to review some of the magazine articles that have been published about Galac-Tac, or perhaps read our WikiPedia page.

We offer additional paper mail services for those serving in our military overseas, in our prisons, or other restricted areas who wish to play Galac-Tac without the availability of a regular Internet connection.

  (Requires Acrobat Reader)     (Or use right-click to download it to your system.)

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Midgard

Picture of Sword as underline to word Midgard

Midgard is a game set in an environment similar to 14th century Europe (though completely different in the details). Populating this universe is a fascinating variety of groups, including three competing religions, foreign imperials, barbarians, merchants, and mercenaries.

Midgard is a single unit level, open-ended medieval war game. Unlimited number of players, with up to 16 positions available to each player (one to three independent clan level positions that the player may start with; plus related expeditionary forces, city leader positions, and factional senior leader positions that can be created only within the game system). Graphical color maps. A game update cycle completes once a month, but turns are processed daily as they are submitted.

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Gateway

Sketch empowerment

Gateway is a computer moderated game set in the far future. You will be role playing a character in this universe and be able to do anything you wish (within the realm of the game), providing you can afford it or can get away with it!

Gateway is open ended and designed to expand constantly. At this time, all new players will begin the game with a star ship and a fair amount of debt at the Gateway Colony. In this game you can go where no other player has gone before ... and you might even find your way back! Graphical color maps. The game processes in "slow" real-time, where activities are measured in hours.

Gateway is an Imperial colony, located at the edge of known space. The Emperor wishes you to explore and exploit the riches in this region of space for the glory of the Empire! You were a "population problem" before you became a heroic explorer. Population problems could also be defined as those individuals that were unwilling to benefit from the benign and benevolent rule of the Emperor.

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Briefcase

An educational game for management training, designed for players in a college class or other group to compete against one another in a simulated business environment, manufacturing and selling a ficticious product called "Bicorders".

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Starfall

Picture of star

Starfall is a computer moderated game set in the future.

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Manifest Destiny

Sketch of soldier

You are the guiding force of a nation destined to become a superpower.

Your nation must become a global power to guide the rest of the world through the blossoming industrial revolution. Unfortunately, other countries have different goals and must be swayed to your camp by diplomacy, financial influence, or, if necessary, by force of arms. As a nation with an intellectual superiority, it is your manifest destiny to lead the world on its best course.

Manifest Destiny is a game of world-wide scope. Using your national resources, you are able to: discover new technologies; expand your production capabilities; amass national wealth; and increase your military might.

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Wastelands

Sketch of nuclear explosion

He had always hated algae sandwiches.

It wasn't so much the sandwich part. He's always felt that two slices of synthetic wheat was probably a pretty good way of packaging algae, and algae needed to be packaged well. It was the only way a person could avoid going mad whilst living on a diet of algae flakes, algae cola, algae bolognaise and polyunsaturated dehydrated algae.

Wastelands is a unit level game where any number of players (normally between 20 and 30), compete against each other in order to control the population alive in the game. The ultimate goal of the Wastelands player is to govern 50% or more of the total population in the game. Players must utilize all of the resources that are available to them, either to increase their own share of the population, or to reduce the total size of the game's population, other than their own, thus increasing their own percentage share. So, instead of attempting to rule over and manage a huge mass of civilians, a player may spend his or her time gleefully bombing enemy cities and slaughtering innocent civilians.

Wastelands is a computer moderated unit level game designed and produced wholly in Australia by The Baron's Regime.

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Fireteam

Sketch of military tank

Fireteam is a tactical simulation of man-to-man combat during World War II. The game will allow you to control a squad of eight men on a mission. You choose the Pacific or Atlantic theaters. You choose which nationality you will fight for.

Games are for 1, 2, or 4 players. Rankings are system wide. You can play against the computer or a human opponent. Two people can play as a team.

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Common and Public-domain Games

3-D Tic-Tac-Toe

This is a three-dimensional tic-tac-toe game played in a 4x4x4 cube where you try to get 4-in-a-row in any straight line. There are 64 possible winning patterns going side-to-side, front-to-back, top-to-bottom, and in diagonal combinations.

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Backgammon

The classic game of Backgammon, not including betting.

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Checkers

The classic game of Checkers.

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Chess

The classic game of Chess.

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Code Breaker

A "code" composed of a sequence of colors is randomly chosen and you have to guess the code using only clues about how many items you've gotten right with each guess. Various settings allow you to adjust the difficulty level.

This is a solitaire-only game where you simply try to do better than everyone else by comparing your personal statistics to the accumulated global statistics.

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Deductive Logic

Three to seven players are dealt cards from a special deck which has had one card randomly removed. Taking turns, you ask other players information about what cards they hold in their hand. From this information alone, you want to be the first player to determine which is the missing card.

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Empire

This is an ancient (in computer terms) tactical economics and warfare game. Populations are managed, enemy cities conquered, and military tanks, ships, and planes are built and deployed for offensive and defensive needs.

The native game is text-based but a number of add-ons are publicly available to assist with play in a more comfortable manner. The game runs in "slow" real-time. Turns are entered via a series of commands, each of which expends time-points (Bureaucratic Time Units) as they are executed in order. But the time-points are replaced slowly and it can be a day or more before the spent BTU time-points are completely replenished. Commands entered on our web site may be composed when no BTUs are available and are queued up to be executed when enough BTUs are available to use them. Game "updates" (generating material resources, more BTUs, etc.) are performed daily.

The engine for this game was first created in the early 1970's and has been frequently updated and enhanced since then. It is currently called "Wolfpack Empire" and maintained by a volunteer team on their site at <http://www.wolfpackempire.com>. Talisman Games will run this engine only for its own players and provides the basic web site interface to access it.

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Flip-Em

A board game containing a square array of spaces. Two players take turns playing a tile of their color (white or black) in an empty space. Any tiles of the opposite color in a straight line between the new tile and another of that player's color are then "flipped" to become the new player's color. The object of the game is to occupy the most number of spaces at the end of the game (when the board is completely filled).

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Franchise

A board game of tiles played in spaces. Connect sets of tiles together into long chains of "franchises" owned by one of the players to gain enough points to win the game.

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Greedy

A simple dice game where the players take turns rolling sets of dice to gain points based on patterns that they roll. The trick is in deciding when to stop rolling and score the points you've accumulated on the current turn, or to keep rolling and risk losing them all.

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Kalah

An ancient strategy game once played with pebbles in dirt pits scooped out of the ground. Can you out-smart your opponent and capture more of the pebbles than he does?

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Nim

Nim is any of a family of games where players take turns removing matchsticks, pebbles, or other small objects from one or more piles according to some pre-set rules. A player wins by forcing his opponent to take the last object (or sometimes by taking the last object himself).

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Poker

Classic five-card draw poker. (Other varieties may be added later.)

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Star Trader

A very simple economic trading competition with spaceships running between stars.

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Vid-Trek

A variety of the truly-ancient (early 1970s) text-based Star Trek game.

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Suggestions?

We're willing to entertain any suggestions you have for other games, if you think they'll be of interest to a lot of players.