oldBlue Byte was founded in 1988 in Mülheim an der Ruhr and became the company that gave Germany its own school of strategy. You recognise its games by one trait: they are not about speed, they are about order. Whether the subject is a battle, an economy or a supply chain, there is always a system underneath that can be understood, and the player wins by understanding it sooner than the opponent does.
The first big brand was Battle Isle, a turn based war game on a hex grid. Against the dry wargames of the day it offered readable controls, clean graphics and, above all, a two player mode on one screen — split play was a signature of the series, and plenty of people remember it exactly from evenings around a single monitor. The sequels Battle Isle 2200 and Incubation later moved the series into three dimensions.
The second brand made the company famous worldwide. Die Siedler, released in English as The Settlers, builds settlement management out of chains: the woodcutter needs forest, the sawmill needs logs, the builder needs planks, and small carriers move everything along roads the player lays out by hand. Watching the machine finally hum is oddly more satisfying than the conquest itself. The first game appeared in English speaking markets as Serf City - Life is Feudal, which is why catalogues list it twice under different names.
Blue Byte was not only strategy, though. Albion is a large science fiction RPG with its own world and a story about colonising an alien planet, and it still holds a devoted following. Archimedean Dynasty is submarine action in a flooded future, a setting almost nobody else attempted in an action game. Ubisoft bought the company in 2001 and carried the Settlers brand onward.
What we have from them
Running in the browser: Battle Isle, Serf City, Albion and Archimedean Dynasty. The sequels are here to download, including Settlers II and the tactical Incubation.
