## Description
The country ruled by the king MacIntyre is attacked by king Macaulay and his
underlings. The land is burning, and the castle is under attack. The guards
convince the young prince Richard to escape. But as he steps out of the
castle, he encounters a mysterious dryad named Beatrix. The dryad tells him
that there is one way to save the kingdom. A powerful ring can turn all the
monster statues in the castle to real monsters. But to be able to do that,
Richard must be cursed. The young prince doesn’t hesitate. Very soon, he leads
the army of monsters into battle, unaware of the price he will have to pay for
that…
_Hi ōden_ is a strategy game with RPG elements. The player navigates several
teams of characters, mostly monsters (up to six in each team) through
isometric environments. Sometimes cooperation between different player-
controlled teams is required to advance. The game plays in real time, i.e.
enemy parties also move and perform actions without waiting for player’s
input. The RPG angle is present in form of character levels – characters grow
stronger after defeating enemies. It is possible to put the teams on “auto-
mode”, having some of them move and perform actions on their own.
The game has a mouse-driven interface with a somewhat unusual feature for its
time: windows. The movement field of different teams, character statistics,
overview map, team management screen – everything has its own window. It is
possible to enlarge any window to full screen, close it, open several small
windows at the same time, and drag windows to arrange them on the screen in
any way.
Hiōden