Egypt: Old Kingdom

I tried this game and the predecessor and found them to be very enjoyable. This sequel keeps the good bits of the first game and adds some complexity and new features, which is how I like my sequels. There is less freedom to do things than I had thought, but it's a nice original concept. It's mainly about creating and managing resources, which means you have to explore and develop bits of land on the map. Each development brings a different combination of resources and you have limited space available. You will encounter other tribes and again, it's up to you whether you want to just let them me, trade with them, integrate them or conquer them. Each decision brings different benefits and costs different resources. Once in a while, special tasks require quicker decisions or the allocation of more resources. That's basically the gameplay and while I found it entertaining, I didn't find it very difficult. Everything went well first time around and I never felt really challenged. The game mechanic is a bit repetitive - the special tasks are different, but follow the same principle. Once you have a balanced resource management set up, events might cause smaller setbacks, but no serious problems. As there is a set turn of events, there is unfortunately no real replay value - you know what will happen and different decisions might affect gameplay to some degree, but won't make for a new experience. I got this game on sale and therefore it's okay, but the lack of replay value would have been disappointing had I bought this for the full price. Still, the gameplay is fun and options expand a bit gradually. The visual design is also pleasant. The historical background is very accurate, I was impressed by this and very much enjoyed it. This shows dedication and good research and absolutely adds to the uniqueness. I enjoyed the gameplay and had an entertaining time with this game, in spite of the small limitations mentioned here.

Increase population, explore and improve your lands and tame animals, research new tech, cast god's favors, occasionally fight auto-combat style battles and complete gods' quests. Game does all this really great and if you are into such kind of games you might enjoy it much. But that's basically all you have. By the time you start building pyramids the game becomes quite boring. If I played on a higher difficulty it could be more interesting though (I played on the easiest tutorial mode) as I think I enjoyed the game for the first few hours.

Plays very similar to Civilization. However, in somewhat smaller and limited to one nation, in this case Egypt. This is good for the game, though, because it doesn't get bogged down in terms of scope. The tutorial also introduces the game - much is known or at least familiar from Civilization. The scope and possibilities grow over time and in the course of the game, there are upgrades and new expansion levels. Everything remains very simple, but that's what I like so much here. Thus, the game runs super smoothly on any Mac and on the iPhone the game is also playable without draining the battery there. A wonderful civilization clone in the best sense. I can only recommend it. I hope the developer manages to continuously develop further parts and grow healthily, in order to deliver a more comprehensive complete work at some point. He shows here very well that he has understood what is important in games like Civilization.

This one also has simple and easy to learn mechanic, and yet more complex. It also plays surprisingly fast and fluid. The 3d map of Egypt took me a while to get used to.

The game is very fun to play and very informative about ancient Egyptian history, which interests me a lot. It's not too easy to play though, so it gives a very challenging experience. At first I didn't like the 300 turn limit, but they've recently added a new gameplay option where you can just continue on playing, next to several other game modes. You can really feel the passion the developers have in this subject by playing the game. Certainly worth a buy if you ask me