Dark Reign: The Future of War is a 1997 Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game, developed by Auran Development (now known as N3V Games) for Windows PCs. Its single-player campaign centres on the conflict between the downtrodden Freedom Guard and the mighty Imperium. The player takes on the role of a Togran survivor (one of the few left after the aforementioned conflict) who is sent back in time to intervene in the war in an attempt to prevent the destruction of their people. The campaign is divided into missions which can be played from both the perspective of the Freedom Guard as well as the Imperium.
Apart from genre staples such as gathering resources, constructing your base, and producing units, Dark Reign has a particular focus on unit behaviour automation. It sports a simple, but comprehensive system for directing units independently. Units can be instructed to follow preset behaviours such as scouting, harassing, or hunting down and destroying enemies autonomously. They can also be given action modifiers which determine how they engage in combat or navigate their environment; how aggressive they are, and how closely they will follow instructions.
These systems allow for a great deal of conflict to happen in a hands-off manner, leaving players to focus on key strategic decisions rather than individual unit management.
Dark Reign comes packaged with a map creation tool that allows players to build their own single and multi-player maps. The map editor has the ability to seed random geometry, place tiles by hand or semi-randomly, place units and structures, set pathing and combat behaviour parameters for units, and establish the conditions for success and failure. These tools have proven sufficiently detailed to support comprehensive community mods such as ‘Edge of Darkness’ and ‘Evolution of Xenite’.
