Really fun 2 player game
Rampart is an early strategy game made for the arcade and quickly ported to the PC. The game genre combines elements of the puzzle and action genre into it's gameplay. Rampart reminds me of an early Dune 2 style game that has been merged with a Tetris game. You begin the single player action phase by selecting your castle on the map and the game will automatically build walls around your castle. You then also build and choose the location of your cannons. The next phase consists of ships attacking you with cannons from the sea, which reminds me of a battle from Command and Conquer Red Alert and you must fire back with your cannons you have placed, protecting your castle in an all out land and sea battle. The siege will end and the phase will return back to your "building" phase, where now you must repair your castle walls which, inevitably will have taken damage and be missing large parts of the wall. This is where the game goes into a tetris mode, where you must repair your walls before the timer runs out. The game throws you random pieces to fit to the wall, that often simply don't fit just like in a Tetris game and this is done on a timer. If you cannot repair all the walls back to fortification around your castle before the timer runs out, you will be game over. You must also build the walls big enough for the extra cannons you will get each round. The territory area of wall you have built will be your claimed land and you can slowly claim other castles and expand your land if you have enough time in the building phase. The two player mode is quite fun, which still stands up in our modern day and age. It can be like a really dumbed down Chess game when played in 2 player which really brings the strategy out, however the more experienced player will always win. Unfortunately the game once mastered can be quite repetitive and easy with no real end to the game. However this is one of my hidden favourite gems and this game will always impress my friends as an entertaining game even if they are not into the retro game genre.
