Sildavia, Play by Mail
Escaque was founded in 1988 with the name of Sildavia, being the first Play by Mail amateur company in Spain.

At the beginning was played exclusively by postcard mail (yes, that was used in the 20th century!), and the system was more or less the following one: After registering, you were receiving the instructions together with a few sheets that were describing your situation and initial information, were refilling a card with a series of commands that were representing the actions that you wanted to do and were sending it by mail to us.

We were processing the actions of all the players along with those of the NPC by means of a computer program and there were generated sheets of results that were ordered back to every player, in them it was showing an updated map and other information of energy, inventories, etc.; with them, you were deciding your new actions, and the whole process was recuring until it was finishing the game (or they were ending with you).

Two worlds on the paper
The first years of Sildavia devoted themselves to construct a system of game at level of companies as KJC Games, and for it the advice of Andrés R. Samudio and Juanjo Muñoz (Aventuras AD) was essential. In 1991, after three years of work, VIRUS it appears as the first Spanish game of these characteristics. The first version of the processor of turns was working on a Sinclair Spectrum+3 microcomputer, one year later was rescheduled for a Peronal Computer with processor Intel 286.

Virus was developing on a map of approximately one thousand squares that were representing the cells of an organic textile. On him every player was controlling a virus with the mission to reproduce, to spread and to fight, so much against other viruses controlled by others twenty-five players, as against the defenses of the organism controlled by routines of AI in the computer. The winner was the first one in managing to capture one hundred cells.

With the challenge of making a more advanced project, in 1993 the target is achieved: FREEDOM or DEATH (FoD) was started, a powerful game with a level of interaction between players very high, was obtaining a quality level never seen till then in the Play by Mail existing in Spain. In FoD every player was controlling a warrior of the future, equipped with a combat suit of high technology that it had to support in the good state while one was fighting under the surface of an asteroid with lasers, bullets, missiles and pitfalls against other sixty nine players and an about thirty of NPC: vegan warriors, extraterrestrial entities and robots. Although the most entertaining part was the interaction: there was a constant communication between the players that was encouraging the creation of alliances, so much at particular level for letter and phone, as across messages inside the game and a newsletter that was edited by every turn.

AREA XXI, Interactive Games
At 1994, under the denomination of AREA XXI, transform the Play by Mail into Interactive Games opening new possibilities for the transmission of information: the phone, the fax and, especially, the BBS: direct connection to a server by modem (the Internet system precursor).

The idea was to finish with heavy turns of ten days of duration, which was the minimal necessary time to send the turns and to receive the results by mail postcard with certain safety, but they were remaining playability and were putting nervous to players. These new methods begun to be used in parallel to the postmail, with the idea of eliminating at medium-term.

During this process there took place the revolution of the world of the telecommunications: Internet pops in suddenly and strongly, eliminating the patrimonies of the information and allowing the direct, massive, instantaneous and cheap communication between the whole world.

The dark age
In AREA XXI begin to develop ELECTIONS, which was going to be the first complete game across Internet, despite it, in 1997 we turn out to be forced to suspend the activity of indefinite form: the general crisis of the culture created around the microcomputers they affected us directly.

Escaque
At year 2K, impelled by new winds in the playful panorama and for the every time major possibilities that Internet offers, the company re-arises with the name of Planet Sildavia and with the target to renew our games, creating a new system of infinitely more attractive, rapid and interactive game across Internet.