Faraway Games, June 8th 1998.

Announcing Tartarus - the internet war game. Launch at last! The game has been in Beta play test since the beginning of April and we are pleased to say the kinks are ironed out and the game has gone live!

The game uses the revolutionary Java programming technology to enable you to join this multi-player strategy game without installing any software.

The game client can be downloaded at run time, and will execute within a web browser, or for those with slower links the client can be installed locally much like a traditional game.

Players submit a turn each day and receive their results the next. The game takes as little as a few minutes to play each day or longer to get the strategy just right, and because it uses standard HTML and Java there is no need to install anything, ideal for playing at work during breaks!


Game objectives:

The game gives each player control of a Titan clan, they must nurture their forces, directing the spawning of the next generation to advance tech levels while fighting for the right to the bio-mass fields.

Each Titan contains five major inter-related systems. Incoming salvos will splash against the shielding or get past the defenses to drill through to the internals, vaporizing systems with nano hunger. Frantic damage control can revive the Titan to fight another day, or they can fight to the death, attempting to cripple the opposition for other forces to finish off.

The game world grows with the number of players, thousands can easily be supported.

A turn is processed each day, and all communication from game server to game client is either email based for off line play or html based to get and send your orders while on-line.

We went live on June 8th 1998, so if you would like to give it a shot please go to the web site, start up the game client and join the game - the first 14 turns are free. The site is http://www.faraway.co.uk/tartarus.html


Company information:

Faraway Games has run three Play-by-mail games over the last ten years, all were strategy games run for small communities of players on an amateur basis. The advent of Java and web technology has finally let us realize a larger game with a fully automated server. Tartarus makes use of ideas and software developed over the last twelve months, but brought together in a flurry of recent hard work. Play testing started in early April 1998, and the game went live on June 8th 1998.


web site http://www.faraway.co.uk/tartarus.html
contact Jonathan Gibbons (jgibbons@faraway.co.uk)