Sifting through the myriad of indie and other free-type games out there can be time consuming. Coming across one that is a truly a gem should be celebrated. Reprisal is one of these. Indie. Remake. Demake. Free. Who cares. It's fun.
Reprisal is a real-time strategy (RTS) game based on the old Populous series, which were landmark games of their time. It's a little different from other major RTS's, as there is technically no unit building, no resources that are farmed, and uses a simplified unit control scheme. Your main weapon, in a sense, is not even a weapon!
Each level you're given an objective, like obtaining a particular item, or gaining control on the entire area. All of the beginning missions involved gaining a new "totem". These totems, after capturing, give you a new power to use in future missions. At the start of each mission, you have a small base camp, and must expand to your enemies towns. Your primary "weapon" is terraforming. You are able to raise and lower the elevation of the entire map. The flatter the area around each of your buildings, the larger they can grow. As they grow larger, they create stronger and more numerous units. When you feel you're ready, you can create a waypoint for your units to gather at, and send them looking for a fight. They automatically seek out the closest enemy building and attempt to capture it. The cycle of capturing and flattening land to expand your empire and bridge gaps to the next enemy area continues until you can achieve your objective. As you complete missions, you gain more totems, which grant you additional abilities, including multiple ways to rain destruction on enemy towns, mass land modification, or unit upgrades.
My description really doesn't do it much justice. The variety in gameplay is almost limitless, as there is no "correct" way of getting to your goal. Without the requirements of resource gathering and building items, it ends up being very fast paced. The browser version of the game includes 30 maps to play through, plenty to get a nice long gaming session in. It automatically saves your progress, even if you close your browser.
There is also a much bigger, downloadable version available on Desura for only a couple bucks.
If you're interested in the inspiration for it, the Populous games were great, created by the awesome Bullfrog studio (creators of Syndicate, Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper, and Theme Park). GOG has Populous, Populous II, and Populous: The Beginning for cheap.
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