It’s a very specific introduction, too. When you put on festivals in your town square women will appear and men will either chat to them or dance with them. To dance with women means the couple are set to marry. Nothing quite like the old-fashioned sexual ritual of the ballroom dance. Benedikt says that the feature of women can be improved in later sequels, but for now it’s a very charming introduction. “It’s a complex issue too. We don’t have kids in the game for a similar reason. It is just very difficult to implement them into the game without having to deal with various logistical problems. That might be something for the future, but right now I don’t have a clue how to include them [laughs].”
The build we played unfortunately came with a bonus technical hitch – many of the demo PCs were running on graphics cards, which had not been optimised to run the game. So suffice to say we didn’t get a full representative hands-on – and even then the game is a fair way from completion. Blue Byte intends to cover a lot of ground in the final release, including campaign missions, a dynamic storyline, multiplayer modes and more besides.
Selecting units and moving knights was simple to execute, and nothing really needed to be explained before delving right into the creative action. Simply click on icons to the side that represent different types of structure, and start building. As you build more establishments, more Settlers will be attracted to your village. You can click on any Settler to see their status and their ongoing ‘diary’ if you will – a list of demands and needs that they might mention from time to time. The graphics might not be worthy of a next generation PC title, but perhaps the thing to be looking for graphically in a simulation game is animation, characterisation and design. In these categories,
Rise of an Empire looks enchanting, and really reminds us of hours spent sitting in front of that Amiga endlessly playing
Settlers II.
In fact, to have a game that debuted in the glory days of the Amiga that is still going strong today must be something pretty special to Blue Byte, which has stuck through a somewhat oppressive time in the European development industry as of late. Benedikt is contemplative on the subject – “I was not part of the development scene during the time of the Amiga, although I know the stories [laughs] – so I don’t know what it was really like then. But what I can say is, certainly in recent years and especially in Germany, we have seen some ‘earthquake’ situations where developers disappeared and professionalism was becoming more and more important to be successful. Today, I think we are seeing a very good development scene for the future – Germany was not very good at development but I think it’s improving.”
If
Settlers: Rise of an Empire is anything to go by, we might be seeing a revival of European and UK game creativity soon yet. The game is set for release in October , and anyone who wants a more in-depth
SimCity-style experience with all the challenges of a strategy game and a constantly adapting environment should definitely keep an eye out for this. If this really does “bring all the best features of the entire
Settlers series into one game” then strategy fans are in for a real treat.
To read SPOnG's interview with Benedikt Grindel click
here.
