It was a big deal in Australia, New Zealand and Germany back in 1997! There was even an expansion that came out a year after initial release. Published by Activision and Developed by Auran in the back of a fish & chip shop in Brisbane, Australia. It's among the most oft-overlooked entries into our beloved genre.
And it's good, really good! And people still play it! So I'm posting here to let ya'll know the multiplayer community for this hidden-gem of an RTS is in full swing - there has even been a community patch released in 2019. The first in over a decade.
Now fully compatible with Windows 10, working online multiplayer, a fully featured single-player campaign. Dark Reign has everything you would want from a retro RTS made contemporary.
Feel free to comment below any other overlooked RTS games from the 1990's era that still have a thriving multiplayer community. A few that you may already be familiar with; CNCnet, War2.ru, NetstormHQ and Populous: Reincarnated. These are all worth checking out if you enjoy older RTS games.
I played this game when I was a kid. I liked and played it quite a bit. Good graphics, sound, interesting units, pretty fast, terrain movement modifiers, cool factions. I would be quite curious to play it again and see how well it fares, it was definitely one of the better RTS in a interesting time with quite a lot of creative games coming out I think. I was looking for it through gog and found it had an updated version there, but in the comments i think ppl said there were many problems with the version. Having experienced these types of problems with other games badly updated on gog (some are great some not good) I dodged it.. On this website you linked, I guess this is a different, better updated version? Sounds great, real neat to hear this game can live again it's definitely worth trying out I'll likely check it out soon
(another one i really liked and wanted to play again is WarWind, this one has become unplayable in multiplayer or even custom games I think despite having a nice editor and many interesting features. Original, looks good, good music, etc. There are neutral monsters/animals that can attack you, can attack them and carry some resource loot from them. Original tech paths, unit upgrading from worker to different fighters or researcher-fighters by spending time inside buildings etc. Make new units by recruiting from arrivals at your taverns. Very cool factions, commanders with a war cry that you can upgrade, some of them can build some can research they can fight.. Some minor unit control issues but it's original and cool game would like to play again)
gog.com update : https://www.gog.com/game/war_wind ; unfortunately missing a crucial part : multiplayer is not supported/included/updated in this version so....
Hey, I remember this game. Enjoyed it but I got into Starcraft not long afterwards and never really got back into it. Not having gaming quality internet didn't help.
Anyone know why it was specifically big in Australia/NZ?
On February 05 2019 08:07 Amarok wrote: Anyone know why it was specifically big in Australia/NZ?
I think because the developer Auran was based in Brisbane, QLD a lot of the CD's made their way to computer stores around Australia and New Zealand. It was also quite popular in Germany for some reason that I can't explain. Maybe they just really like RTS?
Here's a link to a YouTube channel with plenty of recent Dark Reign content from 2019
Hey guys it's great to hear this positive feedback and to know that there are still so many people in the RTS community harboring good memories of Dark Reign from back in the day. I've been hard at work growing the community and we're at 150+ just on the discord now. The forum membership is in the thousands. It all goes a long way towards preserving and maintaining this classic RTS.
Just an update our community has hit 300 members and continues to grow. The YouTube Channel is pumping out regular content. Dark Reign multiplayer truly lives in 2019. There was a seven player super match played online just this past weekend. 3v3's, 2v2's and 1v1 aplenty. RTS never dies!
Hi. I never played Dark Reign, only its sequel, Dark Reign II! And it was my favorite! It was a very unique online multiplayer experience like no other. The 4v4s were epic, I remember the balance was so awesome that most of the time 6 players were eliminated and we would watch as the last remaining two drained all the resources of the map to finally win the game for their teams, despite the game originally starting with players of different and random skill levels!
The maps were so varied that each one was unique and truly felt like a different place, forcing the players to be creative and play very differently than in other maps, unlike other RTS that basically have the same map for everything with a different layout and graphical skins...
The factions were also very balanced and favored different playing styles, with the Jovian Detention Authority being more strategical and the Sprawlers being more tactical.
And if you ever got bored, the community created many mods for the game, which has a very flexible engine that allowed to create new units, buildings, and even new factions with different mechanics that would work nicely with the remaining ones! I still remember creating a saw-blade like unit that were like mobile mines that would rotate really fast to destroy enemy buldings, and little worms that could be launched en-masse to create "zerg rush"-like attacks, that would allow so many that you'd run out of money creating them and lose if they failed because of their low health... those were the days...
Nowadays, the game can be played online-multiplayer via Hamachi.
And the entire source code of the game was leaked, enabling players to make any change to the game that they wish.
Yet, it's dead, but seeing how the original Dark Reign is alive and kicking gives me hope that Dark Reign 2 undergoes a similar revival. Unless I'm the only fan of the game remaining on the planet o_O
EPT
