This looks good and plays well, but I found it dull overall. Played for a few hours and thought 'meh'. It's not that it's unplayable, or has faults, it just didn't grab me. I normally like this sort of thing, but there's nothing new, nothing that stands out, no humourous asides. Maybe it was the mood I was in on the couple of days I played it, but there was nothing that stood out. It's certainly worth a try and you may well find that it's right up your alley, but it's not for me.
The tutorial gives you enough to be getting on with, then lets you loose. After that, you have to find out and discover the game for yourself. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it's well worth the effort. It has difficulty levels in general and each expedition has its own difficulty level too, so for a casual gamer like me, it's ideal. You could lose yourself in this for a few hours, have some fun, then quit. The game itself is well designed and thought out, simple to learn, but difficult master. All in all, fun.
This is more of console game than PC and would really suit Nintendo. It's cute, family oriented and fun. My general rule of thumb for deciding if a game is good vaue is £1 = 1 hour of enjoyment. This is more than good value for money, it's excellent. That said, It's not the sort of game that thrills me. Good parts: Enjoyable, easy to learn and enjoy, lots to explore and build Bad parts: None that I can think of. Why three stars? It doesn't thrill me. Who would enjoy this? People who like the Mario games, Luigi's Mansion, Stardew Valley etc. Good, clean fun and something to wile away the hours without getting stressed, but without being bored witless.
First up, the delevopers are very active in the forums and take serious note of what people say. So it's always worth making a comment. The game itself starts you off with a few people, some tools and a couple of tents. From there you can build a village of 200+ people over several eons. You start with stone and bone tools, work your way through copper and bronze to iron and steel. Your settlement takes in migrants, has children, learns to farm and keep livestock, discovers new building types and improvements on current ones. You will need to defend yourself against the occasional raid, but it's not a massive part of the game and a couple of scenarios doesn't even happen. Micromanagement is not necessary in all cases, as many of the automatic functions work well, such as fishing, wood gathering and food gathering. The hunting is being tweaked to work better, and has already improved over the first release of the game. Yes there are issues. There will always be issues with a computer representation of real life, it happens. But none are game breaking and all can be workd around using some micromanagement of people, especially in the early stages where you have fewer than 20 people. All in all a very good game. Enjoyable, relaxing and fun.
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.
