''Strategy Challenges Collection'' is a two-game series of educational video games created by

Edmark Edmark Corporation (or simply Edmark) was a publisher of educational print materials and educational software developer based in Redmond, Washington. They developed software for Microsoft Windows and MacOS in several languages and sold it in over ...

. The first game, initially released as ''Strategy Games of the World'' and later re-released as ''Strategy Challenges Collection 1'', was released in 1995. A sequel was released in 1997 entitled ''Strategy Challenges Collection 2: In the Wild''.

Gameplay

The games each feature three

strategy game A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree-style think ...

s that the user can play against the computer or another user. In the first game, they are

Nine men's morris Nine men's morris is a strategy board game for two players, dating back to at least the Roman Empire. The game is also known as nine-man morris, mill, mills, the mill game, merels, merrills, merelles, marelles, morelles, and ninepenny marl in Eng ...

Gomoku ''Gomoku'', also called ''five in a row'', is an Abstract strategy game, abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with Go (game), Go pieces (black and white stones) on a 15×15 Go board while in the past a 19×19 board was standa ...

, and

Mancala Mancala ( ''manqalah'') is a family of two-player Turns, rounds and time-keeping systems in games, turn-based Strategy game, strategy board games played with small stones, beans, marbles or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board ...

. In ''2'', these games are

Tablut Tafl games (), also known as hnefatafl games, are a family of ancient Northern European strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers. Names of different variants of tafl include hnefatafl, t ...

Jungle jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅgala'' ...

(called "Jungle Chess" in the program) and

Surakarta Surakarta (Javanese script, Javanese: , Pegon script, Pegon: ), known colloquially as Solo (Javanese script, Javanese: ; ), is a major List of regencies and cities of Indonesia, city in Central Java, Indonesia. The city adjoins Karanganyar Reg ...

. Each game has three levels and provides the user with the ability to decide whether a computer opponent will play offensively or defensively. There are six computer opponent characters (two for each of the three levels) and each always plays either offensively or defensively, but each of them appear on a different level in each game. If one plays another user instead of the computer, the leveling will not have any effect on gameplay.

Reception

''Strategy Challenges Collection II'' was a finalist for the Computer Game Developers Conference's 1996 "Best Educational Game" Spotlight Award, but lost the prize to ''

Freddi Fish 2 ''Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse'' is a 1996 video game and the second installment in the '' Freddi Fish'' series, developed and published by Humongous Entertainment. It was released on iOS under the title ''Freddi Fish Haunt ...

''.

References

External links

* 1995 video games 1997 video games Children's educational video games Classic Mac OS games Video games developed in the United States Windows games Multiple-game video board games {{edu-videogame-stub