I’ve played Ogre [official site], the Steve Jackson tabletop wargame, exactly once before, but it was many years ago, I was drunk and all I remember is a) faint outrage that the most of the units were only cardboard counters rather than lovely, heavy, spiky miniatures and b) the other guy played the titular Ogre supertank and I played the clutch of smaller tanks staring anxiously at him, and naturally he destroyed them all almost immediately. I’m pretty sure this is the essential Ogre experience still, including in this new PC adaptation of a 40-year-old boardgame.

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The video game adaption of Steve Jackson Games’ wargame Ogre [official site], which is about battles between super-powered AI war machines rather than man-eating giants, is coming out on 5 October, developers Auroch Digital have announced.

I haven’t played the tabletop version, but a glance at the rules reference sheet tells me that one player controls a single, immensely powerful Ogre and the other tries to fend it off with armoured hovercraft, big tanks and infantry. The video game version expands that formula with multiple units on both sides taking part in turn-based strategic combat on a hexy battlefield. The Ogres are still as scary, mind (there’s one in the bottom right of the picture above).

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