Original War is a real-time strategy game with several new twists and tweaks that set it apart from the other games of this genre. These generally fall into one of the three groups:
Interesting story-line influencing the game
Original War has nonlinear, multi-branching plot that is really visible throughout the game. The mission objectives are not tired old "kill everything that moves" but more exciting stuff like "destroy that strategic building and retreat" or "capture at least one enemy scientist and bring it here" that stem from the twists of the plot.
Mix of real-time strategy and role-playing game
The single most important thing in our game are people. You only have a fixed number of human units at the beginning of a mission and usually there is no way how to get new ones during the game. At the same time, people are requisite to driving vehicles, collecting material, operating factories, researching new technologies. People are therefore your most precious resource: each of them is an individual with his own name and face and set of skills and attributes that can improve during the campaign. You can also take your men from mission to mission.
New gaming mechanisms
There are many new twists to strategic gaming here. Beside the role people play, as explained above, consider for example this: While people are your most precious resource, you also need something to build your tanks and machine guns from. You have to collect material - basically spare parts and pieces of kit - that appear randomly over battlefield, as they are sent to you through a time machine (time machine? didn't I tell you the action takes place in Pliocene, two millions years in the past? more about it later). You have to capture as much of it as you can and therefore area control (as opposed to supply lines control as usual in RTS games) is essential.