Predynastic Egypt

It's not a huge, complicated game like Civilization, which is a bad thing for many gamers, but a great thing for many other gamers like me! I really needed a strategy managerial game that simply lets you play a light version of a 'grand strategy' game.

Pred. Egypt is a typical resource management browser game. The first time experience is interesting and atmospheric. You can feel and hear the desert sand blow in your face, and envision how it must have been as an Egyptian with a sickle cutting grain when some hippos enter your fields. Unfortunately, the experience of the first playthrough of roughly 3 hours, was the ONLY experience that the game has to offer. Events, research and buildings are fixed. The map is fixed, the resources on each map tile is fixed, and maybe the other tribes might differ in position, or name, but are otherwise the same in number and connected to events (like blocking trade). In addition, with only 10 turns left before the end of the campaign (the game tells you), I was totally unable to meet any main objective at the current pace. That was till the game threw ridiculous bonus every turn to pull off a bronze victory. With the knowledge of most profitable fields of the first game, I started a second campaign. It was almost painfully easy to get a gold victory. Not because I felt like a grand strategist, but I felt more like a generic clone of my previous incarnation.

I found it thoroughly entertaining. I had a feeling of fragility of my nation; I had to be preared for challenges that could alter history of my Egypt forever. There's a lot of criticism of "linearity" - yes, it allows you only to follow predestined path for Egypt, albeit the order of things is slightly up to you. Bat also, if you are slacking at following the challenges, it can do collectively so much harm, that you won't be efficient anymore - you will slide to Game Over. It's not too forgiving. I recommend saving every 5 turns, independently from autosave, because who will here admit completing it whole rogue-style? Iron-man mode? Very unlikely. For the replaybility, I agree - none. But it took me mimimal 12 hours to finish it. I may also say it has pretty elegant design - mechanics are easy, and game teaches you those one small step at a time - but it goes smoothly with gameplay, and you cannot accidentally break the game. As for graphics -- they don't hurt eyes, they are very clear and informative. It's like civilization, with 1 civ, but with story, given through short paragraphs and nice drawings. Demo is free on gog and it lets you continue your save in retail! Well worth on sale or not.

I played this through twice to make sure I wan't missing anything, but I didn't. It's one-dimensional. Not due to the graphics, frankly I'm not impressed with detailed graphics, but due to the gameplay. The goal is to unite Egypt. But there's only one way to do it: conquest. You can't unite through trade, you have to conquer everyone. Mostly by force. I prefer a variety of methods. Yes there are targets and you have to achieve certain things in a certain timescale, and to actually do so is a challenge, one you'll get better at each time you play it, but the gameplay is one way only. That said, there is a certain charm to the game that comes from the lack of intense graphical detail, but its replayability is very low unless you want to continually do better each time. It's not a dire game. It's simple to learn and, for those who like to be challenged, has timescales to meet. But it's not for me. With a little more variety in achieving the goals set, and little less focus on repeating history, it would be better. However, judging from the designers objective's, teaching history is one of the main aims. To that end, it would be a useful game for teachers of 8-12 year old children and I would encourage the designer to approach schools and educational software makers with this game as it would fit in with most curriculum. It may even be feasible to sell it it on disc via the British Museum Shop.

Actually one of the best resource management game I've encountered with nice historical inputs and facts decently mixed in as a bonus. The visual style is simple and feels like a board game and the gameplay itself is likewise you'll realize. Dev game designers are genius to make such a versatile and balanced gameplay. Easy user interface and mechanics learning curve, hard decision making and calculations. Replayability works like this. I barely made it through the first playthrough on normal difficulty, then I immediately had to start over on hard to benefit from earned experience and knowledge triumphing easily in the end. If you love resource management games and history of ancient Egypt you can't go wrong with this one. Looking forward to buy GOG release of the successor Egypt: Old Kingdom!