Some years ago – I forget exactly when – I came across a game called Empire Attack. It was very simple: a grid of rectangles. You start with one grid square filled in and you can take over others by clicking on them. The longer you wait to click, the greater the population you put on the square. Coins would appear and clicking on them would cause an explosion onto four, eight, or twelve squares, putting your flag on them. You could sometimes find whole areas filled with coins, so that clicking on one coin could fill in thousands of squares at once. Other players were there, and you battled to take over other people’s empires and generally have the biggest.
It was a simple game, but it was a huge amount of fun. I played every variation of it (although, sadly, never completed one of the ten day games). I had a clan of one for the clan games, and reached sixteenth place overall in season 1. Sadly, Empire Attack has now closed. I suppose I want to say thanks to the people behind Empire Attack and all the players. It showed that a simple game with simple graphics could be endlessly fascinating and I’m sad it’s gone.