Grim... wrote:
Huh, I'm completely misremembering then. I thought you made your plans and then both sides moved at once, like in Frozen Synapse. I do remember the emailing bit though, and that they decided to charge you for it
[edit] Misremembering, not remembering
If you were issuing the challenge you got to the make the first move, and then your client sent your move to the server, which then generated the email to the person you sent the challenge to.
That person would then get an email (from the Naked War server, not from you), and opening the email launched the game and played the move out to them. (You could also just log into the Naked War site and play the turn from there, which is what I did as I'd generally have multiple games on the go at once and they all appeared in a nice list on my player profile page.)
Once the turn had been replayed, control was then handed over to the player, they then got to plan out their move and execute it, which sent the turn to the Naked War server, which sent the email to the originating player, who then got to see the move when they opened the email, and so on.
It was an elegant system and it worked very well, although some people did take days to send their turns back sometimes.
As for the cost to play, you 'bought' challenges, so you only paid to issue a challenge to someone else. IIRC the cost was very reasonable, and there were all sorts of ways to get free challenges, there were free community games, and all sorts. I'm sure all the details are still in the Naked War thread here.
I thought it was an absolutely fantastic game, and played it loads. I still have my signed plaque at home as the second player in the world to reach the top rank.