Drone

Someone once said that the best drones are the ones you notice the least. In Drone from the late nineties, you'll notice it right away — it'll bite you from all sides and you'll bite back. It's a tactical action game that 486 and Pentium owners could play, and it didn't land among bestsellers or forgotten gems, it just... was. Like many games of that era — it existed, it worked, and it certainly didn't push anything forward.

The drone pilot you control has to lead his flying unit through a series of missions, bombard targets, gather intel, survive enemy weapons. The game is played from a top-down or isometric view — exactly the type where you see your units from a distance and command them around the map. Mechanically, it's nothing revolutionary: click, move, shoot, assuming the unit manages to fly away in time. The environment is functional without extra flair — brown grass, gray buildings, uninspired enemies that move by patterns you've seen a hundred times before.

Where did Drone really fall short? In repeating a formula without anything to compel you to try again. It's neither a tactical puzzle that forces you to think ahead, nor a game with enough friendly difficulty to properly motivate you. The drone flight physics behave intuitively, but the ballistics and explosion feedback don't tell you much — you just know the bomb dropped and something happened. Add to that visuals that appeal more to programmers than players, hiding behind sound you barely notice.

Still — for a bit of gaming on a lazy Friday evening when you want nothing complex, Drone does the job. It's not a threat, it's not a bullseye, it's a game that says what it wants and then doesn't let you go until you've finished it. Today it's looked back on with a certain nostalgia by those who remember it as one of dozens of "games like that" which filled the shelves in computer shops.

Playing it in a browser only makes sense if you crave classic action without inflated ambitions. It's not a game we'd specially recommend hunting down, but if you see it and it takes a moment of your time, it won't be wasted.