Before Omega let you build an AI brain, Origin’s Ogre put you face-to-face with one.
A direct adaptation of Steve Jackson’s legendary micro-boardgame, this is a pure tactical duel: you command a ragtag force of infantry, armour, and artillery, and your enemy is a single, colossal cybernetic tank—the Ogre—controlled entirely by the computer. The Amiga version brings the hex-grid battlefield into crisp, if functional, colour, with clear unit icons and a clean interface that puts the emphasis firmly on the cold numbers.
The AI is the game. As the Ogre, the computer behaves exactly as its board-game counterpart: relentless, calculating, and utterly without mercy. It calculates optimal paths through your defensive line, prioritises targets with chilling logic (always the howitzers first), and will happily roll right over your infantry to crush them beneath its treads. It doesn’t think far ahead in the grand strategic sense, but it doesn’t need to—its brute-force efficiency and your dwindling forces create a perfect rising-tension puzzle. There’s no dynamic learning or flair, just a merciless implementation of the original rules, and it works brilliantly.
Sound is sparse, the graphics won’t impress, but the brain-burning cat-and-mouse chase across those hexes is utterly absorbing. It’s a history lesson in minimalist wargame design, and a pure, unadorned test of your tactical grit against a perfectly single-minded machine. For board-game purists and strategy masochists, it’s a delightfully unforgiving time capsule.
Game artificial intelligence (AI) design by Dallas Snell. Amiga conversion by MicroMagic.Known releases: V1.06 (18-Nov-86) Based on 1986 Origin Apple II release. PC versions: Hercules/CGA, EGA, Tandy/PCjr, PC-88/98.
