Divide and Conquer is an abstract strategy board game designed by Hans Scharler and developed by John Fluet of Dangerous Games. The PC game features challenging AI opponents, an intuitive point-and-click user interface, 3D graphics, and an original soundtrack by Luke Stark. To play, plan your movements, reinforce your positions, and be the first to achieve your objectives.

I started working on Divide and Conquer back in 2007 and brought the game to Gen Con 2008, the biggest board game convention in the United States. I made four polished prototypes of the game and held events at Gen Con to get the word out about the game.

I have great memories of my mom and I assembling and playtesting the early prototypes. The board had 100 squares and you quickly learn how much time it takes to indicate each spot. I adjusted the objective spots and the design so many times that it was best to have an easy way to reconfigure the game and not commit to a design. The final artwork was created by Ted Johnston of Johnston Creative Studios.

After about a decade of game conventions and build up a fanbase, John Fluet of Dangerous Games started the development of a PC-based game leveraging Unity. John’s expertise is in digital game design and AI opponent development. John was looking for an abstract strategy game with straightforward rules to build a game for Steam.

Divide & Conquer on Steam makes it easy to play the game. The PC game features AI opponents and a point-and-click interface to plot and execute the moves. The object of the game is to move starting troops to objective spots in the fewest turns possible. Players plot their moves at the same time and reveal their plans in player order. This causes conflict and some of your plans don’t work out as you planned.

I am looking forward to everyone trying this out on Steam. The game is a bit of a brain burner and if you play with friends could cause some arguments (as reported in the past). The Steam version of Divide and Conquer makes it easy to jump in and experiment with different strategies without the game set up and tracking all of the moves.