Close Assault

Close Assault is a video game in the strategy genre developed by Microcomputer Games, Inc. and published by Avalon Hill Game Company, The originally released in 1982. It is currently playable on Apple II.

From a time when the best graphics a computer game had to offer were on the cover of the box, Avalon Hill's Close Assault offers a hybrid computer/board game experience by including cardboard tokens and a game board. The result, according to the manual, is a 'visual impact . . . far greater than on the best computer graphics displays,' while freeing up for the processor 'a huge amount of limited resources' normally used to manage the graphical interface. Those resources are instead devoted to accounting for every soldier involved in the scenario, and fulfilling a dream of simulation board gamers of the time: realism in what you know and when you know it. In Close Assault, your opponent's units only appear on the board when seen by yours, their morale is only evident by their behavior, and only your experience will tell you the odds of success. This is a far cry from the usual board simulation experience, where you could check the combat success tables and footnote modifiers to judge exactly where the odds break in your favor, and use your opponent's front line morale markers to decide where to push.

Close Assault's combination of three scenarios and three forces allows you to depict a dozen different historical situations spanning northern Europe in World War II. Squad-level tactics are simulated on a common map showing a small town and three levels of topography. Commands are entered numerically or as single letters in response to computer prompts as each player proceeds through six phases of hot turns - units moving, firing and reacting - representing two minutes of battle. As the computer issues the results of your bets and guesses, counters appear and disappear on the map, squads are detected and defeated or destroyed. In this sense, the game is a true hybrid, with players' attention going back and forth between the cardboard map and the computer screen. Units also come and go from your controller: when they become demoralized or enter melee combat, the computer takes over. Meanwhile, the manual comes straight out of the simulation board game tradition, outlined by themes and cases with occasional history and battle science lessons, such as (regarding morale), 'beneath the surface of any organized army lies a terrified mass of men yearning for home and peace'.

The gaming experience would be limited to the standard armchair lieutenant's view, were it not for a simple number jotted on the squad notepad (an analog device to help humans remember casualties, equipment, experience, and leader locations). The number represents you on the battlefield. Somehow, this simple mechanism gets players involved in the course of the battle. If you suffer a casualty, the computer finishes the scenario for you as you watch, possibly even leading your soldiers to victory if you left your sergeants well positioned.

In addition to two-player hot-seating, solo play is available, in which programmers put the computer's capable calculations to work in multi-turn tactics, nuanced with the historical characteristics of the opposing nationalities, from equipment to morale to battle tactics.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.