Egypt Old Kingdom

Review

You travel as part of a tribe looking to expand your territory and find new trade opportunities. You find a place by the river Nile with fertile land, great for growing crops, surrounded by hills where you can build upon and be protected in times of floods. From these humble beginnings, lead your tribe through history, unify the upper and lower parts of Egypt into one nation and create one of the greatest civilisations of all time.

Upon choosing a new game you’ll have the option to pick a prologue, four categories with three options in each. This will determine the difficulty and how the game is played. The four categories are: Reason for Arrival, Generosity of the Gods, Choice the Gods Gave Us and Patron God of Memphis. The top four options are highlighted already for you and this is the option for beginners. The next four below are for intermediates while the bottom four are for those who like a challenge. However, you can mix and match any of the options to your liking. You will be told that selecting the default settings of Organised Migration and Earthly Paradise is recommended until you’ve completed the game, otherwise you may find it a little too difficult, but you can ignore this message should you wish to. After selecting the options for your game, enter a name and hit the start game button to proceed.

As the game loads you’ll be given some history on ancient Egypt. Once loaded you’ll be looking down over a bit of land with a veil of cloud covering the rest of the area. A quest will appear which will let you know your current objective, which to start with is to increase the size of your tribe to five workers and to rule the surrounding lands. Upon completing an objective you’ll be given a one-time reward.

You settle down on lands close to the river Nile, in an area that will one day be known as Aned-Hetch (The White Walls) because of its fortress, and later as the ancient capital city of Memphis. Your goal as one of the tribes of Upper Egypt is to colonise Lower Egypt, bringing all of Egypt under one rule and as one nation. From your humble beginnings you must build a thriving and powerful nation. This must be done within three hundred turns (one thousand four hundred years) and survive the final trial.

You start with two workers and if you have the tutorial checked in the options it will tell you what to do while also giving you some information on anything new you uncover as you progress. To start with you put one of your workers too use by dragging them from the hub at the bottom right-hand side of the screen to an available location on the map. At a location there are some icons which will tell you the type of ground, resources it may produce and any improvements which can be done there. For example, hills which are raised above the floodplains are ideal for houses, barracks, workshops, cemeteries, temples and palaces. While the floodplains nourished by the annual floods each year are great for growing crops.

Now you’ve got a worker on a location before they can collect any resources, you may have to work the land first. On the left side of a worker are the icons with the options on offer to you; the icons underneath show the resources collected per turn. Click on the floodplain icon and you’ll be able to work the land into fertile land able to grow grain and flax. It will take a certain number of turns before any land or buildings are completed and this will be indicated above your worker. As grain is important, it’s a good idea to get some fields growing and bringing in those much-needed resources.

At the top of the screen you’ll find your current resources; there’s Food, Production, Luxuries, Army, Culture and Favour. The number of resources you have at your disposal is in white, any surplus this turn is in green, and if you don’t have enough of a resource to complete something this turn, then it’ll be shown in red.

Around the map you may notice some eye of Horus icons with a number; these are places which haven’t been revealed yet. To reveal a place just drag a worker onto that location, and it will then be revealed to you in several turns (the number of turns will be stated on the icon). So, once you’ve got enough resources to create another worker you can start unlocking the surrounding area. If you move a worker off a location, then no resources will be produced from that location and you could also lose that location to another of the tribes in the area, so use your workers wisely.

As time goes by you’ll uncover new technologies, of which there are twenty-one to unlock as you progress through the game. They’ll cover everything you need to help develop your civilisation, from basic agriculture, irrigation and writing to the first tombs and the building of the pyramids, laws and a new belief in the afterlife can be found. They do cost some culture points to unlock, starting with the lesser techs first and the more complicated ones being unlocked later.

You can also choose to worship one of the twelve gods (when all unlocked) every now and then. Which god you choose to worship will depend on your current circumstance. You may wish for prosperity, peace and abundance, so worshipping Hapi will give you an added food bonus for six turns. While Ptah will increase your production and luxuries when called upon. Using the right god at the right time may just get you through a tough period.

Throughout the game you’ll have to complete tasks and quests, like the assimilation of two hundred and eighty clans into a unified culture or the building of a tomb or temple for a king. On some tasks you only have a limited time to get them completed, if you don’t then it will influence your final score.  You’ll also put up with disasters, like disease (which can spread rapidly through your workers), famine, war, and wild animals such as lions, hyenas and (hungry hungry) hippos, as well as respecting your ancestors, all of which can have a heavy burden on your resources.  And don’t forget to respect your ancestors!

On the main menu screen there’s Play, Additional, Options, Credits, Our Website, Contact Support and Exit, along with a selection of languages to choose from in the right-hand corner of the screen. After clicking the play button, you’ll find New Game, Load Game, Gallery, Quizzes and Back. In the options you’ll find Camera Move Speed, Camera Drag Speed, Sound and Music volume controls, Autosave with save options from Never, Every Turn or Every Two, Five, Ten or Twenty turns, and tutorial mode can be selected here. In the Graphics, there’s Resolution, Windowed, Quality, Antialiasing, Anisotropic Filtering, Texture resolution, Shadow Quality and V-Sync.

When you go to exit the game, it reveals your score.  So far, I’m not doing very well as I’ve not completed some of the set tasks.  So it tells me I’m as wise as a helpless child … my mummy doesn’t think so.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!