It’s a strategy game you can play in 10 minutes, which is exactly what the world needed. Oasis is to the big strategy games like Civilization what Disneyland is to Europe. All the most important parts are there, but they have been shrunk down to something that even a child can understand.

You have your exploration, but it’s as simple as clicking around a large grid. You have your army building, but that’s trivially easy as well. You have your combat, but that’s as simple as “make armies go here”. You even have a sort of simple technology tree where you can set some of your units to go build new stuff, but again, it is simplified to a couple of mouseclicks. It’s a Readers Digest strategy game, and that’s very cool for those of us who love strategy games, but have lives outside of building virtual armies all night.

The setting is Egypt, but only marginally so. There is a desert, and there are some towns, and there is always an oasis (thus the name), but if they told you it was India or China or Mesoamerica, they could make you believe it with very few art changes. The basic gameplay involves moving your half-naked king around the map uncovering cities, camps of followers, mines, and special items. When you find the cities, you can search them for loot and build roads between them to make them grow. When you find mines you can set them to building technology for you. And that’s pretty much it. You get 85 turns, most of which will take you less than a second or two, and then the barbarians invade. If you have done a good job preparing the map, then you live to the next level.

Sounds too simple, but when you get to playing it, it’s a lot of fun. The short game rounds keep you playing long after you plan on quitting, and before you know it, the demo is over. And you know what? Go ahead and buy this one. You’ll want to play it again later.

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