by Robn Kester With the upcoming release of their latest effort, American Civil War Soldier, By Design, Inc. is hoping to once-again fill a gap in the turn-based strategy genre on the Macintosh. They definitely aren't newcomers to this kind of gaming, and this surely won't be their last. ACWS features turn-based strategy gameplay that takes place during the American Civil War. You, as the player, take sides with the Confederates or the Union and wage war through multiple historically documented battles on a 3D battle arena. Fight your way through fields, across bridges, and take command of your men, while trying to fend off the enemy, all for a taste of victory. IMG dug into the trenches to find out a little more on ACWS and what By Design's motivation was behind it: IMG: How long has By Design, Inc. been producing games for the Macintosh? BD: We made or first game in 1994, since then we have produced a line of military simulation games including the Musket Fire series and the Cannon Fire series. IMG: How did you come up with the idea for American Civil War Soldier? How did you research and reference the background information for it? BD: We were looking to do something different. There are lots of titles that deal with regimental and larger units. We wanted to explore the smaller actions and get a feel for what is was like to try to lead men and really be on the battlefield. We did lots of research, books, magazines, visits to historical sites, etc. IMG: You will be including lots of historical battles with ACWS, but how about the fictional battles. Can you give us any insight on what kinds of battles gamers might expect there? BD: The fictional battles will be some of the smaller actions that never got reported. A company of cavalry run into a strong picket line, or a units fight while out gathering supplies. These things happened all the time but no accurate records were kept for such small battles. IMG: What kind of total game time might the average gamer expect during a single campaign? BD: In order to play a single large game we see a user spending anywhere from an hour to 3 hours. Some of the campaigns with have up to 10 battles in them. IMG: What will the system requirements for ACWS be? BD: Rather modest, any color Mac with 10 MB of disk space and 10 MB of memory. Non-Power Macs will be able to run the game, just not as fast. IMG: The turn-based gameplay might leave some action gamers feeling a little dry. Any action games in the works from By Design, Inc. in the future? BD: We feel that there is a strong place in the market for turn-based games. We do have plans for a real-time game but it is farther out in the future. It's not hard to see that By Design, Inc. has war down to an art, afterall they have been helping Mac gamers wage war for years. It looks American Civil War Soldier is going to be another notch in their belt, adding to their existing lineup of solid strategy-based war gaming, including their titles Musket Fire and Cannon Fire, as well as Waterloo Campaign. Make sure to check out our full detailed preview of this new title, right here at IMG.