Classic: Tango Strike

By: Derek Yu

On: June 3rd, 2009

Back in the day, Fallen Angel Industries, or FAIND, was a well-regarded group in the Klik community (the community of people who use Klik n’ Play, The Games Factory, and Multimedia Fusion). They released a number of entertaining and polished titles, including Super Ken Senshi, Factor X, and Siege. Some of their former members include Joakim Sandberg, who released the original Noitu Love under FAIND, and Hamish McLeod, the creator of the now-vaporware War Angels.

Of their games, Tango Strike continues to stand out to me as particularly entertaining and polished. In the game you control a squad of three operatives which you can switch between. Each operative is better at one thing or another. Johnson, for example, is the weapons expert. Miles is good with tools. Vasquez is a woman. You can outfit your squad before each mission and are given a money bonus depending on how well you do in speed, stealth, and teamwork.

The missions, which can get pretty complex, span large maps, and there is some freedom in how you accomplish your various goals, which generally involve rescuing hostages, disarming bombs, and blowing stuff up. But the flavorful briefings and varied locations make it fun to play and see what the next mission is. Which is good, because it’s definitely a pretty challenging game at times.

Speaking of Klik history, the Daily Click recently put up The Click Museum, where you can download a lot of classic Klik games, including Tango Strike! Let me know if anyone still has the RPG Sword of Cobalt. I loved that game. It’d be a shame if it were lost forever.

TIGdb: Entry for Tango Strike

Multiplayer on One Keyboard 5: Siege

By: Jordan Magnuson

On: April 26th, 2008

One of my all time favorite “Click” games. You play the White Wizard, residing in a medieval fantasy fortress where you create and unleash hordes of minions onto a 2D battlefield with one goal in mind: defeat the warlord across the way. If you ever played Three-Sixty Pacific’s Armor Alley, you’ll find that the premise is similar, but this game might just be better than its classic counterpart.

The mechanics are fairly simple: use the keyboard to move blocks of resources around to form combinations which produce troops, then unleash those troops to the battlefield where they fight automatically as best they can. The game blends strategy, tactics, and dexterity in a really interesting way.

On the strategic level you will have to decide which Warlord to play (each has their strengths and weaknesses), and what your general plan of unit production is going to be: a cheap mix of foot soldiers and archers, with an occasional battering ram thrown in? Or perhaps you will rely on more advanced technology and an air based assault? Or how about trying to infect your opponent’s troops with the Black Plague?

On the tactics level you’ve got to respond to the situation at hand, both in terms of the resources you have in front of you, and the current state of the battlefield.

Finally, on the dexterity level… well, the game is played in freakin’ realtime, and you better get good at moving those blocks of resources around!

Siege has a couple of flaws, like its tiny 320×200 resolution and some imbalances that I’ll let you discover, but these small detriments are small next to the fun of madly mixing resources and watching your miniature troops fight it out to the death in front of you, with your arch-nemesis pounding away on the keyboard beside you.

The game supports human vs. computer and human vs. human play. I don’t have to tell you which is better.

Download Siege for free from WinSite (1.35 MB).

P.S. You may need to run the game in Windows 95 compatibility mode; and remember to copy cncs32.dll to your system32 directory if the game doesn’t work.