Is there a tablet (android or iOS) equivalent of the old impressions games city builder games?
I don’t believe such a thing exists. However, there are patches around to get all the old games up and running in widescreen/higher res out there that work great. Obviously, it can’t ‘improve’ the graphics, but it beats trying to play in an 800x600 window.
http://www.wsgf.org/node/19659 is where you would want to start (I’ve used the patch available for Zeus, but haven’t tried Pharaoh yet).
Oohh, gotta try that Zeus patch. Thanks!!
Yeah, sadly I wouldn’t hold my breath for an iOS/tablet-friendly version of those Impressions City Builder games.
For one, I don’t think the folks who actually worked on them–most of whom ended up at Tilted Mill–own any sort of rights to allow them to adapt those games to another platform.
Whomever does own the Sierra properties is happy to license those properties out (such as Gabe Knight), but isn’t actively doing anything with them besides selling them through an outlet like GOG. In other words, they’re not developing them for iOS.
Finally, the City Builder series seem to be the unintended parents of the most awful, non-game IAP/microtransaction games available on the platform. If you do get your “wish”, it’ll actually be like the Monkey’s Paw. You’ll get Pharaoh as a title that either takes three months real time to build a small city…or you can micro-pay for bricks, flooding, and certain necessary buildings. Have fun!
All the truths, they hurt!
I’ve played Pharaoh with the high-resolution patch, and it’s definitely an improvement on modern machines, but understand that not all the UI scales properly, so some screens are a little wonky. But nothing that gets in the way of playing.
I’m a city building connoisseur, and it’s true there are not many great ones on iOS, and none following closely in the footsteps of the Impressions games. The easiest to recommend is called Townsmen. It’s not perfect, but I came to enjoy it quite a bit (especially after they ripped most of the free-to-play stuff out).
(Well, rymdkapsel is a brilliant one, but its scope is so much smaller than the Impressions games, I assume that’s not what you’re looking for.)
necroing the thread.
I had fond memories of this game, playing it in 1999.
For once the rose tinted glasses are not inaccurate. It’s still a great little game. I’ve just finished mission 3, where you have to get pots to a certain number of households, and this is where they introduce the idea of houses upgrading themselves if they are well serviced, and downgrading if not. houses eventually provide taxes.
The catch being that the higher level houses provide you with scribes, who provide you with more income, but they are removed from the workforce, so there’s this constant juggling act between getting into more population, and feeding them and managing them, making sure they have enough food, housing and work, whilst exploiting them but not too much.
Solidly designed.
Some UI stuff could make it better, like popups and somewhere on the general screen where you could see how much food etc was coming in, instead of going to your overseer (which is a great way to disguise a nested menu. Brilliant!) and hot keys for said overseers.
IMHO this is one of those games where all they need to do is update the graphics, put in a 3d system (not just good looking, would help mightily with building roads et,) a modern ingame wikipedia and update the user interface (which is surprisingly good considering this is a 199 GAME).
I’ve gotten the high resolution fix and it is wonderful!
Isn’t Children of the Nile the same kind of thing but better?
“Better” is in the eye of the beholder. ;) They’re both Egyptian themed city builders, sure, but the game mechanics have some major differences that make playing them very different.
Personally, I love both games, but the Impressions city builders always hold a special place in my heart. I always kinda liked the walker mechanic. (An unpopular opinion, I know.)
@Miguk Steam reviews seem varied. Some say it’s nowhere near as good as Pharaoh, some say it is the iterative next step, some say it’s an awesome evolution.
I wouldn’t know as I own Pharaoh but not CoTN. it’s not very expensive on Steam so I may get it next weekend.
I’ve played and owned Pharaoh/Cleopatra, Zeus, Emperor and Children of the Nile. Children of the Nile has that feel but like @Hansey said, it’s not really the same. I too enjoyed it though, but I don’t know that I ever finished it like I did the games before it. I still have my disc version of the older games, and Emperor toyed with MP which I loved.
Oh yeah. I had forgotten that they ditched the walkers. It was a more like Tropico where your people roam around freely? I guess my memory of it is a little fuzzy. What really sticks in my mind is that my dog would go nuts when she heard the animal noises, as if this little cavalier spaniel was ready to go hunting giraffes.
I liked CoTN, but Emperor is the Impressions game that I always go back to. Besides being a great game, it lets me be a medieval bureaucrat in Asia just like my avatar.
I think Pharaoh is thematically the strongest of the Impressions games, and totally worth playing, although when I do, I miss some of the simplifications and UI improvements of Zeus and Emperor. The recruiter walker, in particular, I find makes building really messy because it means you have to have some “slum” residences in places where you can’t evolve them, to supply mines and such with labor. I can respect the added difficulty that comes with that, and the idea that you end up with a city that has a range of prosperity levels, but I think ultimately it’s less fun. Also, doesn’t Pharaoh have residences that grow to have a bigger footprint automatically as they develop? That causes some weirdness when it happens in places you don’t want it to, leaving “orphan” houses that can’t evolve.
Still, nothing like the epic construction projects in Pharaoh.
This is why I always view Pharaoh as the best of the series. Nothing was more satisfying that seeing the completion of a massive pyramid.
Although I seem to recall times when the systems would glitch and building would stop on the pyramid for no apparent reason. Starting those over was painful…
After Pharaoh I played many other games and never really thought much about it again until recently. Seems I missed out on some very interesting builders.
I did play Anno 1600 at some point, and thought it was okay but not great. Interesting multi island resource chains though.
I’d say the Anno series are pretty different from the Impression lines. They’re still good but not the same flavor. Zeus was my favorite I think, but I enjoyed Emperor a lot. Child of the Nile is fun but it lost some of the shine somehow… probably doesn’t help that every map you play kind of feels the same, and it felt more random to me. Like when things fell apart in the other game, I knew why it did. CoTN felt like oh well no food this year because no flood… okay… but never really lost even so.
So I finally finished this one mission that was giving me grief, and in the end I did it easily enough. It only took me half a dozen tries and 2 youtube videos for help, but when I finished it I was 3000 debens in the black, whereas most people end up finishing in debt.
It was mission 5, the first time you are tasked wih a monument, namely a mascaba, which you have to import expensive bricks for.
Luckily you get to export papyrus.
I was a bit inefficient and had a huge surplus of barley and beer and just enough food.
Still, this one mission has really taught me a great deal about the game systems and mechanics.
I know the next mission has no farming but has some mining and game, and introduces military stuff, so that should be interesting.
I also bought Emperor, and had a dabble in Caesar, but the latter seems to rocket in difficulty in mission 2.
Mission 1 was simple (prefectures and housing and a senate building) enough and then mission 2 starts easily enough, with Farnsworth, granaries and markets, but then ramps up quite suddenly with water, education, religion
…all.of which should have been introduced much more slowly and with more space between them.
Old school I guess…
Emperor (and Zeus) have much smoother difficulty curves, for sure.
I will admit that when I play Pharaoh, I look up what events are scheduled for each scenario beforehand. I don’t think being taken by surprise makes the game any more fun, and often can just mean I have to start the scenario over again, which can mean hours of playtime repeated.
Oh, for anyone who is interested:
http://pharaoh.heavengames.com/walkthroughs/complete/index.shtml
If the walkthroughs aren’t enough, also check out the forums for housing block layouts too. And any post from Grumpus 20 years ago is gold.