Game Classification

Demonic hordes are invading the kingdom from planes beyond, and it is the job of the arcane and eldritch occultists -- yourself chief among them, as the apprentice of the immortal sage Old Loth -- to banish them back to from whence they came. A barbarian chief might storm into the fray swinging his mighty axe; a knight might gird himself in full plate and direct a cavalry charge of lancers... and their bodies would both come floating down the stream the following day, disfigured and eyeless. (Kirk Cameron would likely suffer the same fate.) You have other, subtler and more calculating ways of waging war at your disposal.

With an ambiance akin to an all-strategy Archon, this game has you arranging supernatural and pyrotechnic units allotted to you along a gameboard strewn with invaders, growing thicker in random scatterings with each passing turn. Rather than placing strategically for territory as you might in Go, placement is done with more of an eye toward offensive potential, like Chess or, better yet, Dominoes. Instead of setting up numbered tiles to fall over, however, you have instead nasty little homonculi... exploding, directionally. Each of your units is inert until triggered by the overlapping explosion of a nearby unit, at which point they "go off", hopefully eradicating demon scum in the fiery wash -- as well as activating the next unit down the line. The strategic element involves most elegantly arranging the units at your disposal into the most murderously effective chain reaction sequence possible, working around existing positions on the board held by the legions of Hell and incorporating leftover units or pre-existing support structures such as braziers, cannons or sacrifices into your elaborate Rube Goldberg machine of exorcism.

Though you unlock the use of special units (Iron Maiden, Fallen Angel) and get point bonuses for exceptionally effective strings of explosions, the enemy advances relentlessly, another wave always just around the corner. If you should leave ten of them on the board at the end of your turn, the game is over. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/diabolika-2-the-devils-last-stand/