I read about Josh Sutphin's strange tactical war game in the back pages of this month's PC Gamer, where it was described as deadly Tetris. That was enough to get me on board. Now I've played it, I can think of several other equally appropriate descriptions, as well: Machiavellian tennis, say, or Advance Wars for nasty people.
Fail-Deadly is ingenious and simple, although it really doesn't sound it at first. You belong to a shadowy organisation that wants to instigate all-out thermonuclear war between two opposition countries. To do this, you've wheedled your way into both of their supply chains. When they start to skirmish, you can essentially make each sides' moves for them on the battlefield, with the aim of orchestrating such a miserable blood-thirsty stalemate that mushroom clouds seem like the only decent option.
So it's a strategy game in which you're playing yourself. The sparse map is symmetrical, with territory carved up right down the middle. Each side has a missile silo, and it's up to you to make sure that both of them survive intact until they're given the order to launch. That order will only be given, however, when the threat meter is full, and it's fuelled by each individual death on the battlefield. Your job, then, is to take the random units that spawn every five seconds at the bottom of the screen and divide them up between the two sides, trying to keep both nations locked in combat in the centre of the map, and ensuring that nobody can sneak off and start to chip away at the other's silo.
This is where the Tetris bit comes in, of course, as you're constantly faced with a randomised spew of weapons and perks, and you must find a way to deal with them all, without lending one side an advantage. Luckily, the stuff you're given is all fun to play with. There are factories for creating tanks, helipads for creating choppers, and barracks for creating riflemen, alongside a selection of general upgrades and auto-turrets. Occasionally, you'll also get an air strike for tackling big clusters of enemies in one go. That's handy, except the game's spun the idea of who is and who isn't an enemy around so much by this point, that you'll often get dizzy just trying to work out who to use it on.
So, yes, Fail-Deadly's an unusual spin on tactical games, but it can also seem like much more than that. To me, for example, it's a reminder that this really is the best era to be interested in games, because, whatever's happening in mainstream, big-budget gaming, a small team – even a one-man team sometimes – can come up with a weird, exciting, distinctly non-commercial idea, and is then able to build it, release it, and let everyone else play it.
It's nuclear war, perhaps, but this time everybody wins.