Real-time strategy games are nothing new but it seems the most popular ones adhere to a sort of playbook. Most have a dark ambiance, bombastic characters, epic stories, and extremely high stakes. In a lot of ways, Starcraft, released in 1998, was the blueprint for many of the real-time strategy games that dominate the landscape today.
It combined stunning visuals with gameplay as intuitive as it was addictive. As the years passed, its fanbase steadily grew, eventually becoming fodder for professional competitions. Those days, however, are in the past. While Starcraft doesn’t shine as brightly as it once did, there are others that are running with the torch of real-time strategy.