Ok, this is obscure enough as to probably not elicit a response, but ...
Did anyone play the Sony Online Entertainment virtual card game Star Chamber?
This was a really interesting game that I unfortunately learned of at a really inopportune time: late in its lifecycle, but when I was still too young to feel comfortable playing a game online with people (let alone investing any money into it). (The game was active from 2003 to 2012.) I only ever played the single-player demo, but I played it through repeatedly because it was so engaging.
The concept of the game was that it was a collectible card game that was played out on a board: not a board game that used cards, but the inverse. You could play single-player campaigns and (primarily) multiplayer online skirmishes. Similar to Magic: the Gathering, there were five different resources or colours, and each alien race corresponded to two of the colours. You colonized new worlds, fought battles with other races, played cards to influence the game and shape your strategy, and voted at the central Star Chamber. There were a number of categories you had to divide your votes between (in secret), each granting different bonuses to the victor, and you could win the game with enough successful votes in one of the categories. There was a lot of strategic tension over not only the voting, and the cards you could use to influence it, but getting as many delegates as possible to the Star Chamber on time and stopping those of your opponents from reaching it, and balancing the Chamber against other priorities (you could also win by conquest or culture). Anyway, it's maybe hard to describe why it was so compelling, but it was just a really unique (to me) combination of collectible card game and strategic board game that I found really enjoyable.
I was thinking of it again recently and wondering if anyone had played it. I've been trying to find the game files somewhere on the Internet so I could play the demos again and perhaps the campaigns if I could find them (the servers for online play are, by now, down). I still have the files on my computer, transferred from my old desktop, but Apple changed its chipsets and it's no longer possible to run them! Anyway, the odds of anyone on here having played the game are probably reasonably small, but I just thought I'd post to see if anyone else ever had (and, who knows, might have the Windows files still sitting on their computer somewhere ...).
Did anyone play the Sony Online Entertainment virtual card game Star Chamber?
This was a really interesting game that I unfortunately learned of at a really inopportune time: late in its lifecycle, but when I was still too young to feel comfortable playing a game online with people (let alone investing any money into it). (The game was active from 2003 to 2012.) I only ever played the single-player demo, but I played it through repeatedly because it was so engaging.
The concept of the game was that it was a collectible card game that was played out on a board: not a board game that used cards, but the inverse. You could play single-player campaigns and (primarily) multiplayer online skirmishes. Similar to Magic: the Gathering, there were five different resources or colours, and each alien race corresponded to two of the colours. You colonized new worlds, fought battles with other races, played cards to influence the game and shape your strategy, and voted at the central Star Chamber. There were a number of categories you had to divide your votes between (in secret), each granting different bonuses to the victor, and you could win the game with enough successful votes in one of the categories. There was a lot of strategic tension over not only the voting, and the cards you could use to influence it, but getting as many delegates as possible to the Star Chamber on time and stopping those of your opponents from reaching it, and balancing the Chamber against other priorities (you could also win by conquest or culture). Anyway, it's maybe hard to describe why it was so compelling, but it was just a really unique (to me) combination of collectible card game and strategic board game that I found really enjoyable.
I was thinking of it again recently and wondering if anyone had played it. I've been trying to find the game files somewhere on the Internet so I could play the demos again and perhaps the campaigns if I could find them (the servers for online play are, by now, down). I still have the files on my computer, transferred from my old desktop, but Apple changed its chipsets and it's no longer possible to run them! Anyway, the odds of anyone on here having played the game are probably reasonably small, but I just thought I'd post to see if anyone else ever had (and, who knows, might have the Windows files still sitting on their computer somewhere ...).