Making History With the Guys from Muzzy Lane
We got an email from Muzzy Lane, the guys behind Making History: The Calm and the Storm about four weeks back. I never heard of it until now, so I went out and bought the game. Damn, this is a great game!!! When I went up to the table at PAX East they were showing the new Making History 2.
This is a huge leap from what the last one was. I had the game case on me, and I have the game in my CD drive of my laptop always ready and rearing to go. It's like a kick ass version of risk except with out the stupid dice, it's a turn based game. So going up to the table I went up to the first guy, which turned out to be the Product Manager Chris Parsons. He asked "How are you doing?" I held up my pointing finger and said, "Hold on one second." I whipped around my backpack and pulled out the game case. I told them, "You sons of bitches have got me hooked on this damn great game!" He had the biggest smile on his face, and was happy that I was so passionate about the game. Yet stupid me I wasn't able to turn on the recorder fast enough because I was just so eager to get into the conversation with Chris.
He showed me all the new settings that they had put up on the game. I was so blown away by everything, and he saw how much I liked it. He gave me his card and told me to keep in contact. The new settings on the game have made it a multitasking challenge that will make it a great game. Such as the first game you can take over things, and didn't have to worry about the basis of religion and culture. This one makes it a little harder, as you can click through and see how the cultural diversity of the land is. Let me give you an example of the game setup: take Germany, for instance. If you're the Germans, and you want to take over Austria (seeing that they have very similar cultures and languages), they are able to mix fine after you take it over. However if you were to take over France, which has a different culture and religious background than Germany, they can have serious ramifications on the economy since the groups that live in the areas you've taken over will try to slow down your production.
This is such a clever idea that was put into the game, because while playing the first one I thought in my little Atheist brain, "At least I don't have to deal with religion and culture." Now I'm going, "Holy crap, now I got to make sure if I take over things I can either turn them into my puppet government, or liberate them and become an ally." Playing the first one it got to the point where I was seeing the Germans taking over a lot of areas, and they were catching up to become a Super Power. So I said, "Fine I'll take over Cuba," and then I took over Mexico, Central America and South America. But then Canada got pissed off because I was trying to take over Ireland. So seamlessly I pissed everyone off so I couldn't ally with anyone until it was basically too late. I lost to the Germans because of all the Allies they had obtained. I started up again on the same thing, which I'm still working on. Yes, the game is that good that even I said I have to take this on again.
So when I started the second time around, I worked on getting my industries up; along with research to get better military units. This way I can obtain goods along with a lot of the other things that you need in society to grow the economy. Once you start building up things, it's a good idea to start trading on the market with getting goods, food, and everything else down the line. This helps you with getting better relationships with the diplomacy of the group you're trying to ally with. So saying I'm America, I create very close relationships with them; and if they decide to go to war and add me to their alliance I can go in and help them, or I can decide not to and break off the alliance. It's basically how a real-world scenario could take place along the line of around the timeline of twenty years, from the 1930s to the 1950s. So this is around the time that we got the Germans, Italians, Russians and Japanese working together to take over China, UK, Europe and basically everything and anything that isn't nailed down.
Making History 2 will be coming out soon, and they will have a beta so people can try it out and they can get some feedback. Hopefully it'll be out by the end of this year. I want to say thanks to Chris Parsons again for sitting down with me and showing me the ropes of their very awesome and kick-ass game. I look forward to more of their work.
You can see more from Muzzy Lane and Making History at www.making-history.com.
