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!
The game looks good and was highly entertaining on first and second play-through. However, the game's strongest point of historical accuracy is also the game's biggest limitation. Events and quest opportunities appear in exactly the same sequence and exactly the same time on each play-through. The game must also be completed in a fixed number of turns. There is therefore a little bit of strategy, but primarily in the form of attempting to reach a game-desired optimum rather than player exploration. Because of the limitations, the novelty of the game wears out by the third play, but with such a low price, it's not such a bad deal.
A rather neat concept. You play as an Egyptian tribe along a predetermined path/scenario and you need to form the kingdom of Egypt.
You do this by managing your resources (assigning workers and accumulating resources) and asserting dominance over neighbouring tribes.
The mechanics are rather simple and their main focus for you is to fulfill objectives as efficiently as possible.
You get a score showing how well you did.
Apparently this was made as phone game, but it doesnt really hinder your enjoyment, the mechanics still work fine.
Visuals are simple, yet pleasant. The use of some Greek names seems a bit strange, though.
The base price seems a bit high for what it offers, but its a good deal during a sale.
I really want to like this game. It is a top-down 2D strategy. I normally love those! But this game has four fundamental problems.
First, it railroads you. Either you do exactly what you are told or you loose. There is no in between. So the replay value is zero.
Second, it is inconsistent with it's own rules. For example, there is a certain thing that takes 5 rounds. But for some reason (probably because the developer wasn't good at balancing and also had a problem with play testing (see the finally problem)) at some time it just takes 1 round. Because ... well the mission demands for it. Only that you do not know that before.
Third, the game has a horrible first trading mission. Normally the missions are obvious. Build that, do this. But for some ungodly reason one of the first missions (that blocks all future missions) is to do the following: scout along the whole nile, then scout to the very right of the map and find a tribe. The game calls those guys philistines or something. But that is a lie. The tribe you are looking for is actually the snake tribe. Only that the game doesn't tell you. Fail to figure this out and you will run into the last problem.
Finally. the horrible, horrible max round limit. So imagine you took a round longer to either do the trading mission or something else. Maybe you got a bad event? I am just kidding, the events are always the same. Anyway, in a normal game you will loose if you made an mistake. But in this game you only loose if you can't finish the game in 210 rounds or so. Why? Because the game wants to see you suffer! You will always loose just as you can see the finish line. You are always one or two rounds away from finishing the game. Just one last building. And then you still lose. Because you didn't remember one of the many (yet static) bad events. Or maybe because you did misplace a worker in round 7. Either way, it's hours of playtime down the drain!
So yeah, good concept but the really bad game mechanic kills it.
