A game of epic ASCII tactics. (Put another way: A tower defense style game implemented as a console application.)
This app is written in .NET Core, an open-source cross-platform runtime. You can download the SDK or runtime here:
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download
Right now BattlePlan can only be run as a console application. If you're working from source code and the .NET Core SDK, set your working directory to battleplanconsole (the directory with battleplanconsole.csproj in it). Then you can run the game with this command:
dotnet run <some_args>
If you're running from a published DLL, change to the DLL's directory and run it like this:
dotnet battleplanconsole.dll <some_args>
The rest of these instructions assume the earlier situation, but hopefully it's obvious how to adapt.
More detailed instructions on how to setup and run can be found in docs/how-to-run.txt. (Those are mostly intended for non-programmers.)
To start the game's menu from which you can select and play scenarios, type the following (from the directory with battleplanconsole.csproj in it):
dotnet run menu
To play a specific scenario, you can also type:
dotnet run play scenarios/beginner/1.json
You can set up scenarios by editing the JSON files, or using the editor (see below).
For gameplay instructions, see docs/how-to-play.html.
To interactively edit a scenario (map, attack placement, defender placement, etc.), type:
dotnet run edit
or
dotnet run edit scenarios/somefile.json
The right sidebar lists commands available in the current mode. Hit Enter to change modes. In some modes you can hit T to change which team you're editing for. In Attacks mode, you must also pick a spawn point and time delay to add attackers at.
In most other modes, you use the cursor keys to move around the map and then various keys to place terrain, spawns/goals, or defenders.