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Water Cooler Games

Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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1066

by Ian Bogost May 19, 2009

categories: Advergames , Educational Games

Wow, another educational game that doesn't suck! Check out 1066, a game produced by Channel 4 in the UK to promote and accompany a television program of the same name, about the Norman conquest.

The game is beautiful and quite complex, featuring both single-player and multiplayer battles. If I have a complaint, it's that I wish as much effort had gone into teaching the player to play as went into the awesome narrated intro. I still haven't figured out how to successfully instruct my archers to fire (and yes I read the instructions). Still, go play it.

Comments (1)

When your archers are close enough to enemy units, a little target-looking icon will appear in their commands circle, which you click on. Then, during the battle, the archery mini-game will come up, and you have to click on the bow string and drag it to get the right power, and move the mouse to the position you want for the angle. My archery was overall very poor, and I might have killed as many of my own guys as I killed of theirs (remember that you'll be shooting into the same row that the archers are in).

Thanks for pointing the game out. Even with my archers sucking, I was able to win the first battle in story mode. Hooray for the Vikings!

Kevin Jackson-Mead on May 19, 2009 4:55 PM