Immortal Cities: Kinder des Nils

The first city builder that I've ever played. I remember spending hours as a child just watching the sun rise above my city. I was quite worried that in the present day it might not quite live up to my memories, but so far I'm pleasantly surprised. This game is quite unique in that it gets rid of a lot of more 'gamey' mechanics of older city builder, making the player focus on logical placement of infrastructure (so that various crafters are close to the resource they need, people have places to shop nearby and so on) instead of abstract numbers. Every city dweller can be followed back to their home, and if at the moment you aren't busy laying out a new army camp or calculating if your great pyramid will get finished before the pharaoh dies, you can just follow them around as they go about their day. The graphics are quite dated from modern perspective, but acceptable if you squint. I'm a big fan of the soundtrack - it's calming, climatic and doesn't distract you from playing. The interface is... functional? It's sometimes a bit hard to tell what's the exact cause of trouble in your city, but you get used to it. The game runs well on my system in 1080p, all the text boxes have scaled well and aren't too big or too tiny on a bigger screen, as is often the case with older games. Overall I'd definitely recommend it for people who want a calm, unhurried and less abstract city builder.

Keep in mind this is the first city builder game I've ever played, so I haven't played any of the impression series (Caesar, Zeus, etc) so I can't compare it to any of them. When I picked this up, I was mostly just wanting to play a game that took place in Egypt. And it gave me a really interesting point of view in what the culture valued the most. Basically it's a city builder set in ancient times, you grow food next to the Nile, food is also used as currency for basic needs like baskets and mats, you can grow more food from nobles and the pharaoh but they require higher needs like jewelry and entertainers, and finally ya have priests who do everything from teaching, medicine, funerals, worship, and more, and you can even create an army to protect from bandits and invaders. The tutorials do a good job explain how the mechanics work for the most part. The game itself runs great, no hiccups for what I can see, and controls are what you expect, keyboard and mouse usage. Though the menu is a bit dated and hard to navigate through. A pretty fun game, in which I sometimes I still play once in a while as I haven't uninstalled it yet, and it's been a couple years. So have a go if you can put the time into it.

Children of the Nile is the more modern version of the old citybuilders like Pharaoh And Zeus, allowing you to build a city in ancient Egypt. Some of the more modern things are, aside from the obvious graphics being different, that you no longer need to worry about intersections sending your supply and maintenance people entirely the wrong direction. You can now actually focus on building a city, rather than having to puzzle out the most efficient way to place buildings without them collapsing, catching fire, and starving because the food vendor doesn't show up there The game starts slow every map, as you have 10 bricks(Enough for one baker, brickmakers huts don't need bricks), and only one educated person in your city at the start. So you will want to build a school and several brickmakers more to ensure you can keep growing. Before you know it, you've spend several hours building. There is no immigration either, from what I can find. You start the map with 200-300 citizens living in huts, scavenging off the land. After that, children will be your main population growth. This becomes an issue when you want a big military, as military men don't get married - They live in their barracks-tent with two other men Some things that are bad, there are a lot of shrines out there that will take a bit to figure out which goes where and which are popular - If you even have room for them. Sometimes your citizens or a merchant may get stuck on a corner, and sometimes you may find your labourers can't figure out which limestone block they want to pull In the end, it's still a pretty and somewhat relaxing game where you can spend hours getting your city just right, and then decide to change it up again because you have a new idea. Cosmetic things like gardens, plazas and trees are free to place too, so you can make it look good without having to worry about your good looks making your city slow to a crawl Worth grabbing if you like citybuilding - it's good at what it does

I've been out of the gaming loop for a few years, so I may not be aware of some recent entries into the city sim market that may have advanced the genre, but for my money Children of the Nile ranks far and above any other sim, including SimCity. The reasons have all been stated better than I can do it in other reviews, so I'll just add my voice to the chorus: Don't hesitate! Buy this game!

While I like what they were trying to do with this game I feel like the art direction with the buildings and the early 3d engine look terrible. A really neat thing though that I do like is how the civilians pretty much provide for themselves going shopping and gathering their wants and needs vs impressions series of games just having a building in the vicinity that does patrols and thus provides whatever goods. Although an issue arises over this self providing system where the citizens seem to be incompetent at times to getting their goods for themselves and will end up revolting over it and there's jack you can do about it. This can become frustrating as it will shut down your city cause the dolts can't grab a few common goods from a store next door which is maxed out in supply. really if you're really looking for a beautiful city builder I'd recommend impressions line of games Caesar, Pharoah, and Zeus. The system for them gathering goods and food doesn't look as natural in this but it actually works and the buildings look amazing.