Civilization nearly ruined my freshman year at college.  Back in those days, only a couple of guys in the complex had a computer, the graphics weren't nearly as pretty, but the reality of how great Civilization showed through it all.  In fact, back in those days of 386 computers, I hardly ever remember walking through our dorm and not seeing at least 2 of the 3 computers in the hall with Civ being played.  One of the big downfalls of Civ, that nearly lead to many students flunking out their freshman year was that the game required hug amounts of time to play.  Nearly a decade and a half later, Mind Control is working on a great game that takes a lot of the fun in Civilization and makes it a 3-5 minute game to play instead of a 30+ hour game.

Those who have played Civ., will feel quickly at home in Oasis.  You control the Scarab King.  The game gives you 85 turns to explore, research technology advances, trade, mine resources, find treasures, convince special advisors to join your ranks, and build up an army that will protect you little kingdom from the on-coming barbarian horde. (YES!  all in 3-5 minutes)  The map in front of you is very Civ-esque in its layout.  There are mountains, desert, crop fields, cities and a few other types of squares.  The entire map is a 10 x 10 grid.  At the beginning of the game, the map will be hidden from your view, though a few '?' squares will designate where special things, such as cities may be.

Using the mouse, you can click on any square adjacent to an already discovered square to move the Scarab King to that square.  One of the first keys to playing is finding cities.  Once found, you will see the size of the city in the form of a numeric number that actually tell you the number of inhabitants in the city.  To get cities to grow, you should build roads between them.  Keeping in mind that the map is 100 squares, and building roads takes a second turn on top of uncovering any square, you have to plan well where you will build roads.  In addition, some of the mountain ranges contain mines.  Assigning people to a mine will allow them to start developing technology.  Ah, but where do you get the people? 

As you move around the map, most squares you uncover will increase the number of followers your king has.  Out in the desert, you are likely to find large numbers of nomads, thus increasing your followers.  As you move and find fields, you get less followers, but you also know that there is likely a town nearby.  In order to assign people to the mine, or build a road, you need followers to accomplish these tasks.

Without getting too deep into the game, there are other things you do as well.  Oasis squares increase your score as well as your magical power, a sort of last line of defense when the barbarians come to ravage the map.  One of the Oasis squares contains an Obelisk, a special symbol that must be collected on each level you play in order to build up to a victory in the game.  Each city may also hide treasures such as weapons that increase their attack ability, or advisors that will stay with you and give you special abilities on the next level if you can survive the barbarian horde.  However, doing any of these actions will take a turn away from you, and so the key strategy commences...how do you build your kingdom?

After the 85 turns are up, the barbarians enter the screen.  You have 10 seconds before they attack to shore up your defenses by assigning out your followers to any city, in addition, you can draw soldiers from nearby cities if the cities are connected by roads.  There is even more strategy than I've outlined here, in fact, much more, but we'll wait until the game comes out to give the game a full and proper review. 

Oasis doesn't have all the 3D special effects of most commercial game, but the graphics are perfect for what the game needs and they are not a negative point to the game in any way.  The music is noticeably lacking, and I wasn't too hip on the save function, but beyond that, there isn't anything I could say negatively about the beta build I played.  This is a special game that reminded me how I felt playing Samurai last year.  I expect it to be one of the winners at the IGF as it really is a game that sticks out of the pack with its high quality in-depth game play packaged into a few minutes of exciting play.  This is definitely this is a game that I  look forward to the full version being released.  Until then, the beta test is open, so head over to the website and check out this wonderful little game.  It will only take you 3-5 minutes ;)