A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like Asteroid Miner sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. The word 'checkmate' is linked to the Persian expression 'shah mat', used when the king was trapped. And then there is this: M.U.L.E. arrived in 1983 with multiplayer competition built around gathering resources and keeping a colony alive, an early example of resource-driven strategy play. That long chain of experiments is part of why strategy games still feels fresh when a game finds the right twist.
