Greed Corp is a Turn Based Strategy game released in 2010. In my opinion, it demonstrates extremely clean game design on all fronts. The gameplay and rules are simple, but allow for significant stragic depth. The aesthetic, in visuals and music, is superb. And the game effectively delivers a meaningful message through only gameplay.
Greed Corp is a hex tile turn based strategy game with the goal of eliminating your opponents. Tiles start neutral, but when a player moves a unit onto one they gain control of it. There is only a single unit in the game, the Walker. Walkers can move 4 tiles within their own territory, or onto one adjacent neutral or enemy tile. Up to 16 Walkers can be on a tile at a time. When they enter a tile with enemy Walkers, they trade 1 to 1. If all defending Walkers on a tile are eliminated, the attacker gains control of it (even if they too are out of Walkers). There are also three buildings available: Harvesters, Armouries, and Cannons. Harvesters are an economic building. Armouries are required to build more Walkers. Cannons will be discussed in a later section. All building can only be built on controlled territory.
The unique selling point of Greed Corp has its foundation in the interaction between Harvester and the game board tiles. Each tile has a height from 1-4, which can be reduced. If one ever hits height 0, it collapses and is removed from the game. At the start of each turn, the player gains income for each tile which has a Harvester, or is adjacent to one. Each of these tiles then has its height reduced by one. This creates an interesting strategic interaction between maintaining territory and harvesting it for resources. The obvious result of this is that the game board is reduced in size as players harvest it for resources.
As the game progresses and more of the board is destroyed, movement and navigation problems begin to arise. The game presents two tools for this: Cannons and Carriers.
Cannons are, as mentioned earlier, one of the games three buldings. They are time consuming to establish, and often not very cost effective compared to Walkers. First, the building must be constructed - which takes a turn. The next turn, a shell can be loaded into the Cannon. Only on the turn after that can it be fired, and only once a turn. However, multiple shells can be loaded in at a time. A Cannon has a range of 4 tiles. If there are Walkers on the target tile, 5 of them are eliminated. The tile height is then reduced by 1. If the tile is destroyed by this, then it will cause a chain reaction where all height 1 tiles connected to it will collapse - and cascaded outwards. Cannons end up as an effective tool to attack weak and at risk positions, and to break board parity in late game stall where there is little space to mass Walkers.Carriers, on the other hand, are single use items. They are built in one turn, and on the next turn can be used to transport all Walkers from one tile to any other tile on the board. Carriers, usually, have a much more immediate and powerful payoff than Cannons. However, a Carrier costs 50 to build, whereas a Cannon (25) and Shell (20) cost only 45 - and subsequent Shells can be loaded into the same cannon. This means that Cannons can outscale Carriers in efficiency in the long term - and power when they collapse tiles. Both are vital for winning the end game.
The game has four factions with their own unique art. However, these factions have no effect on gameplay.
Greed Corp delivers its theme and message very directly through the game mechanics. To win, a player must entirely eliminate their opponents. To achieve this they must be more powerful, and the only way to gain power is to destroy the game baord - the very thing the conflict is over. By natural progression, both players need to continously invest more and more into defeating their opponent. As a general rule, almost every game of Greed Corp ends with a handful of single tiles floating in space, with nothing around them. In the end, the victor often controls fewer tiles than what they started with. Both parties would have been much better off just doing nothing and sharing the space. Additionally, the complete lack of gameplay variety between the factions adds to this message. Each of them has difference themes and motivations presented by the campaigns minimal plot - yet they all take the same actions in the end. The Freemen may be nature loving and peaceful people, but they don't act any differently from the industrial and militaristic Empire when it comes down to it.
Greed Corp is a perfect 10/10 game.
I think it may actually be very interesting, and potentially a better game, if actions were done simultaneously. There is already very little difference on action order in the game, so having all thing actions be planned by all players, then resolved, would not change much beyond exactly that. I think the only real difference in ability would be building on newly captured tiles - which I think can be managed fairly easily. I am tempted to code up a quick prototype for this variant of the game, as I think the strict gameplay should be fairly simple to recreate if I ignore visuals and graphics.