Stratego

I first saw Stratego as a board game on a shelf at summer camp, box corners bent, half the pieces missing. A few years later I fired up the same game on PC from Accolade — and suddenly the only thing missing was a second player, not the pieces.

Stratego is a turn-based strategy game played against the computer, ported from the classic board game. Each player arranges their troops on the board and the goal is simple: find and capture your opponent's flag before they find yours. The board is covered with pieces of various ranks — from bombs and spies through scouts to the marshal — and until two pieces meet, you have no idea what your opponent is hiding. That's the whole magic of the game. Information asymmetry, bluffing, deduction.

Each turn you move one piece one square horizontally or vertically. When you enter a square occupied by your opponent, battle ensues — the higher rank wins, both pieces are revealed and the weaker one leaves the game. Exceptions exist: the spy can kill the marshal, bombs neutralize anyone except the engineer. The mechanics are solid and haven't aged in thirty years. What has aged is the interface — in the DOS version from Accolade you'll fumble through it, but I wouldn't say the controls were ever the reason to come back.

The computer opponent in 1990 did what it could, and that wasn't always much. The AI sometimes moved pieces in ways that would make a human player suspicious of intentional sabotage. On the other hand — Stratego on PC at that time was mostly about not having to find a second player, and it fulfilled that purpose reliably. Visually it was a simple board with symbols, sound was purely decorative, Sound Blaster didn't capture it.

Today anyone who knows the board game and wants to remember how it worked back when you booted from a floppy will appreciate Stratego in the browser. High nostalgia value, low technical barrier. If you don't know the game at all, you'd be better off reading the rules first — the game itself won't hold your hand.