Browser based games have come of age. They’ve gained in complexity, rivaling some of their more traditional competitors and offering gamers every gaming experience from adventure gaming to arcades, to RPGs. It was only a matter of time before war games battled their way to the browser as well.
| Features | Rating  |
Battle Dawn by Tacticsoft is one of the most popular of the new genre of browser based war games, and its combination of simple playing style with strategic complexity explains why. Battle Dawn is a game of strategy, diplomacy, and tactics. Individual cities, alliances, and coalitions vie for power all with the goal of becoming the top rated in the game. But in the world of Battle Dawn power comes in many forms. Every player is the leader of a colony, building their city while engaging in battles with some and forming alliances with others.
| Alliances | Rating |
Alliances are Battle Dawn's version of the game guild and members can help one another, sharing resources and defenses, but alliances can also make enemies, putting cost to safety within alliance membership. The game is free to play and turn-based, with games lasting an Age, a preset number of years until game finish. The game ends at the end of an age or at a point in which an alliance controls the ultimate game objects, the relics. Strategy in the game takes place primarily at the alliance level where player made alliance compete for possession of game relics and resource boosting crystals. In the process alliances make and break deals, conquer their neighbors, and at times wage vast wars against one another.
| Tactical Options | Rating  |
The tactical portion of the game is easy. Players build their cities, and armies, then attack and defend as necessary. But it’s the choices of what to build and when, who to attack with how large an army, and how much to hold back in defense that brings about a complexity to the gameplay. There’s no one skill that wins position and power, it takes a combination of effort on all fronts to survive, much less prosper.
| Visuals | Rating  |
For a free to play browser based game the visuals of Battle Dawn are mixed in quality. The game is played on a pre-rendered world of either Earth or Mars. The playing area is a terrain map, accurately portraying Earth’s landmasses and oceans, and showing a desolate Martian landscape. The world map has three zoom levels that take it from a full global view into a small regional tactical view. The visuals offer easy game assessment at any level, with armies, cities, and diplomatic status quickly discernable.
| Player Cities | Rating |
Player cities are visible in two levels of detail. In construction mode they are quite detailed, with additional city development features adding to the cityscapes. However these detailed cities are only visible to the city owners, other players see only a generic city on the world map whose size varies according to city population, though players who donate to the game do have an adjusted city image showing the world at large that they’re a supporter.