Minimalists

Overview

A node conquest RTS, pared right back

Minimalists is a node conquest RTS. Each map is a handful of structures (houses, turrets, headquarters) and every structure holds a live unit count. You grow your force by holding structures, and you take new ones by sending units at them. That is the entire game, and the restraint is the point: with no fog of war, no build orders and no resource screens, every match is decided by judgement about where and how hard to commit.

The minimalist presentation is a design constraint, not a budget one: colour is ownership, shape is function, and the number floating over a building is its entire status readout.

Mechanics

Committing forces by percentage

The core strategic verb is the send: click a structure you own, click a target, and a slice of your garrison marches. The size of that slice is set by a commitment slider of 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%, which turns every attack into a risk decision. Full commitment captures faster but leaves the source structure exposed; small probes are safe but feed the defender's regeneration.

Structure variety layers on top: houses generate units over time, turrets project defensive power over their surroundings, and losing a headquarters is losing the match. Structures can also be upgraded, raising their capacity and making map control compound.

Opponents

Enemy AI that plays the same game you do

The AI has no cheats and no extra information. It wins by making the same commitment decisions the player faces. Each opponent continuously weighs its options: which neutral structures are cheap to take, which enemy structures are poorly garrisoned, when to reinforce a border house and when to mass for a push on a headquarters.

There is not just one AI, either. I wrote several distinct AI personalities: a priority-list attacker, a pure scorer, one that coordinates multi-structure pushes, an economy-first generalist, a momentum player that shifts behaviour depending on whether it is winning or losing, and a warlord that sorts the map into frontline, support and economic structures relative to where its enemies are massed.

The real test is the four way free for all, where a single match can pit several of those different brains against each other at once: factions expanding into the same contested middle, punishing each other when they spread too thin, and turning on whoever looks weakest, the player included.

Feedback

Showing the move, not just making it

When you send units, the move itself is the feedback. The particles that represent them are mapped onto the actual navigation path, repositioned and turned to follow each corner and the slope of the ground, so a send reads as a living column of force moving across the map rather than a straight line.

Design

Designed to be read at a glance

Because the whole board is always visible, readability is the UI. The game sticks to strict visual rules: one colour per faction, one silhouette per structure type, one number per building. A player can parse a four faction board state in a second, and the menus and match flow follow the same restraint.