Play Global Effect Online

Global Effect is a real-time strategy game released in 1992 for MS-DOS. Developed and published by Millennium Interactive Ltd., it presents a managerial simulation set in a post-apocalyptic world, viewed from a top-down perspective. The game tasks players with constructing and maintaining functional cities under challenging environmental conditions.

Players manage the development of a city, which requires establishing core infrastructure such as housing, food production, and power generation. Progression is tied to efficiently managing these resources within a chosen environmental setting, such as an icy or devastated world, which significantly impacts the difficulty. A key system involves power management, where players start with a limited capacity and must build environmentally friendly structures, with planting trees being a notably effective method to increase the available power. Once a stable city is established and capable of supporting military units, players can direct these forces into combat by assigning pre-planned flight paths that can be manually overridden during engagements.

The simulation includes systems that allow players to observe the direct consequences of their actions on the landscape, such as deploying weapons or expanding forestry. Global Effect also features multiplayer functionality, supporting two-player games via a null-modem cable connection, even between different computer systems. It is noted as an early example of a real-time game to offer this kind of networked play.