Man y'ever just think about Archon?
What if chess had unicorns fighting dragons
I've been playing a lot of UFO 50 recently and I've written before about how this game encapsulates a huge chunk of my childhood, sorting through unknown ATARI disks to see what sticks, and a game I think about a lot is an Electronic Arts strategy title from 1983 called Archon: The Light and the Dark that became a staple in my household; arguments settled between siblings by matches, intense rivalries sprouting up over the supposed imbalance of the Unicorn, house rules preventing shapeshifters from fighting phoenixes to prevent endless battles.
At first glance, the game looks like Chess with one side featuring 'good guy' fantasy tropes; knights, unicorns, a phoenix, etc led by a wizard - the other featuring 'bad guy' tropes; dragons, basilisks, goblins all led by a sorceress (love to see gendered vilification in the 80's even from a game designed by a woman).
Gone is the Chess standard of 'I landed here, your piece is gone'; insted both pieces are transferred to a battle screen where they duke it out to see who gets the space. Each unit (or 'icon' as the game calls them) has an attack and health; some icons are melee, some are ranged, some are fast, some are slow and it's up to you to learn how to use each one as they all play WIILDLY different. A Unicorn is fast and deadly, a Troll is slow but does IMMENSE damage, dark's Shapeshifter transforms into anything it fights against; there's no in-game limitation to the match-ups. A skilled player with any one of the starting seven knights could take on the Dragon, dark's "ultimate" icon, or a light Valkyrie could pick up goblins one at a time - however how much damage you can do (and take) can also depend on the board state.
In the above screen you can see the background of the battlefield is a dark green color; the the screenshot above that you see the board's background is a lighter color. Each board space is one of three; dark, light, or neutral. Dark icons have an advantage on dark spaces, light on light etc - however each cycle of player turns (one dark, one light) the overall board's 'neutral' spots change color, waxing and waning toward light and dark.
Victory over the other player happens one of two ways; you eliminate all of their icons, or you capture all of the 'Power points'; there are three in the middle column of the board up for grabs with each player's 'leader' on their own respective power point. The middle ones are subject to the ebb and flow of the light/dark cycle, but the leader spots are not. Claiming the power points and killing the enemy leader is definitely a viable strategy if you consider that the neutral power points will eventually switch to a different color, leaving you at a potential disadvantage.
Editing note; the power points flash so they don't appear in every screenshot lmao
The leaders, being spellcasters, also have their own abilities that take place on the main board; each has a list of spells they can sort through and cast once per game. Casting a spell takes up a whole turn but can do things such as send an icon of yours across the map to engage in combat, swap icons positions, imprison a nearby enemy icon so it can't act for several turns, revive a dead icon or even summon a random elemental force to act on your behalf for one combat.
An interesting balancing act though is that Power Points are immune to spells; you can't target an icon who is residing on one, nor can you use the various movement type spells to move someone there.
The game is truly a monument of design and is still incredibly fun to play to this day (did a few rounds this morning to brush up for this blog but my kids regularly have tournaments). There have been ports and remakes but I think the original 1983 version for Atari or Commodore 64 are the ideal ways to go.
Wait so Should I Play itβ’?
If you have an Atari I highly recommend it. If you have no aversions to emulating 40+ year old games I also highly recommend it. It has two player and VS computer modes (and the computer can be MEAN)Also thanks to the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History, we have a full scan of the original manual archived so you can look through that to see strategy and background. We just don't make manuals like we used to.