A long time ago back in early 2003 I stumbled upon the most refreshing game I had ever played. It offered fast-paced run and gun action (a huge plus during a time when Counter Strike ruled the PC gaming world), online gameplay, simplistic yet endearing graphics, and system requirements that wouldn’t cause my eMachine — embarrassing, I know — to explode, all wrapped in a price package that easily fit my broke college student ass… $0.00.

At this point you’ve probably already guessed, even had you not read the title, that I am referring to Soldat, one of the later “shareware” games released back in 2002.

Back then, I didn’t know what an indie game was. Hell, not even indie games knew they were “indie” games. Indie gaming, as we term it today, is a recent phenomena that was started in the mid-2000s and popularized by games like Braid and World of Goo. But Soldat was indie despite not technically using the term to classify itself. The game was developed by Michał Marcinkowski, along with a few others back in 2001, since then the game has largely been driven by community support.

So you may be wondering where I am going with all this. Fact of the matter is that I simply can’t relay why I still play the game without first explaining what it is and where it’s come from. Soldat is a game that’s been around for a long time and has undergone many updates and various changes throughout it’s history while still holding onto the core gameplay that made the game so great.

So, without further ado, here’s why, after so many years, I, along with thousands of others, still play Soldat:

It’s a 2D Counter Strike/Worms hybrid

To this day, Counter Strike maintains it’s reputation as being one of the best and most competitive online FPS games for the PC. Soldat is very similar to Counter Strike in many aspects only, instead of being 3D it’s a side scrolling 2D shooter. The game’s developer was even inspired by the original Counter Strike when building the game and it shows with the wide variety of weaponry you can select at the beginning of each life. Additionally, the game also takes many aspects of the famous Worms series, like the level design and 2D view point.

When all is said and done, you have a remarkably comparable game that easily stands out as a great game despite the odd combination of two completely different games.

The Online Community is ALIVE!

How many online games, especially smaller indie online games, get released every year that feel completely deserted? There are countless titles out there that never seem able to grab hold of a steady fanbase that will continually return to the game for some online lovin’. Soldat, despite being almost 8 years old, has maintained it’s community to this day. On any given day, at any given time you’re bound to find a few hundred people populating Soldat’s many servers.

Now, I don’t know if this is because Soldat got a jump on all other games offering free online multiplayer, or if it’s simply because Soldat has incredibly addictive gameplay. Regardless of the reason, the people are still there, and that makes for a great gaming atmosphere.

It’s free

Yes, I’ve stated this many times already, but the fact remains true. Soldat offers amazing gameplay wrapped in a package that costs nothing to access. Sure the game has a paid “registered” part of it, but that’s primarily for aesthetic differences and don’t really alter the fundamental gameplay aspects of the game.

While free indie games may be a dime a dozen today — not to knock any specific indie games — it’s amazingly rare to find a free indie game that also offers a large community of passionate gamers (Dwarf Fortress aside).

Rocketboots

While this is not a revolutionary feature by any means today, when Soldat was first released it was an amazing feature that brought loads of fun in a small package. In order to navigate the exceedingly huge 2D maps, Soldat gives your little trooper a pair of rocketboots which enable you to fly around the map. This makes the game much faster and way more fun than it would have been had the game gone without.

15 minute gameplay

Minute-games are all the rage today. These are games where you can pop in for a matter of minutes and get a satisfying experience out of them before having to run off to get to whatever life is nagging you about. While games like Farmville may have mastered and refined this aspect of gameplay, they certainly didn’t invent it. Soldat is a game that really only requires a few minutes for you to be completely satisfied and ready to move on thanks to the game’s fast pace and quick kills.

Bottom line, Soldat is a just one of those amazingly fun games that have aged incredibly well thanks to a number of forward thinking features that helped the game get an ambitious start eight years ago. While I’m not sure how much longer the game can maintain it’s popularity in the future, what with all sorts of various competition coming out, the fact that it has maintained until a new decade is nothing short of remarkable, not even Halo 2 lasted that long, although to be fair it probably would have had Microsoft not pulled the plug.

Still, Soldat is fun today, will be fun tomorrow, and until the developers stop caring about it, I don’t see it going away anytime soon. In seven years, let’s hope I’m able to write a post called “Soldat: Why After 14 Years We Still Play It.”