This category of games is rather filled to the brim if you know where to look. Many of these games are just like Yume Nikki, where an easy and simple platform of content generation is the main drive behind it. Yume Nikki was made with RPGMaker. It didn’t even use most of the functions that RPGMaker is for. Yume Nikki is mostly ignoring the functionality of the software it was made on, bearing no resemblance to an RPG. But the more interesting aspect of these types of games is that they are made by a very small group, if not a single person. One example today is Eskil Steenburg, the creator and sole person working on Love. Doesn’t need massive amounts of people behind it; talking to gamers about this concept would be preaching to the choir. All modern day gamers that grew up on the 8-bit era would like to think that a game only needs to be fun.

The way I use experimental might be a misnomer. But I’ll be damned if the games I mention here didn’t correctly execute some strange aspect or function that is either still not working in other games, or no one really hasn’t done it in the same scope. Here’s an old one for you all.

Hardwar is one of those games. I find it odd that amongst the free-roam games that we now see today, none of them have NPC AI where each one is given an agenda to deal with. This is how Hardwar dealt with it; all npcs you encounter are seen trading, scavenging, pirating, and policing on Titan – a small mining moon orbiting Saturn. It’s a rather limited environment. But the size of the world in Hardwar, from a technical standpoint was all that was needed to have the AI happily slave away at their coded goals and priorities. Pirates targeted anything with a filled cargo pod and engage with missile fire. The trader would release chaff and attempt to run away, sometimes dropping the cargo. Police would send an enforcer to defend the trader. Scavengers would get into fights over scrap metal and leftover trade goods from blown up pilots. This also occasionally prompts a scavenger to fight a pirate over the loot, but only rarely.

If you intervene, or find yourself in a different fight altogether, you’ll notice that any action is almost attributed to the four simple roles of Hardwar: piracy, trading, scavenging, or policing. However, doing your own policing is kinda dubious. At best, you’re just defending yourself from other pilots who want your money. These four main activities are what percolate through the flight lanes of Hardwar. The simplicity of design makes it rather dynamic, but the legacy design of the system also means that not as many ships were seen as feasible. Imagine if a game today manages the same level of dynamics with more self-minded AI running around. It’d be a little more than hectic to be honest. Maybe that’s why if I play the game now, I’d think that there aren’t enough ships flying around. But do I really want that?

This game was released in 1998 by Software Refinery (now defunct), published by Gremlin Interactive and Interplay.

Fans of this game nowadays find themselves in other games like EVE Online, where the level of random activity and events exceed the range and scope of Hardwar. But it’s been 12 years and I still haven’t seen anything to oust Hardwar from it’s position as having a dyanmic system, where NPCs actually lined up at the trade centers like normal players, trying to grab that trade deal of the century – only to be met with pirates firing at them, scavengers stealing the dropped goods, and police firing away at the pirates.

It’s surprising to this day that there actually are people who still remember this game. In particular, there’s a reboot being made over at Hardwar.org. Go give it a visit and show your support if you were one of the few people who played this gem of a game.

Oh, and there’s factions. That was one thing Hardwar didn’t really get right. Meh.

Vocaloid art done by Masuneko. Crappy writing by yours truly.

-maserbeam