A strange little side quest
One reason strategy games keeps producing good game ideas around Merge Ant: Insect Fusion is that its history is full of strange turns. The word 'checkmate' is linked to the Persian expression 'shah mat', used when the king was trapped. A second detail makes the picture even better: Spacewar! appeared on MIT's PDP-1 in 1962 and became one of the earliest influential computer games shared among programmers. That long chain of experiments is part of why strategy games still feels fresh when a game finds the right twist.
