When Nintendo Fire team member Faith first saw the announcement of this title in our inbox, she got very excited… a game based on ancient Sumer! How cool! Nobody ever makes games based on ancient Mesopotamia! It must be played immediately!
So, the whole team headed over to the Sumer booth to give this title a shot, and it turns out… well, let’s just say the other two team members enjoyed it. Rather than a true exploration of ancient Mesopotamia, this title plays out more like a digital board game… a resource management style game that is both frantic and requires strategizing at the same time.
It’s been presented as a “bridge between two worlds” due to the board game style presentation combined with the fast-paced gameplay, but it’s not something that everyone is going to pick up on first go. In fact, it’s so twitchy in terms of what you can do / can’t do / where the rewards fall that if we tried to sit here and explain it all, this first impression write-up might head into the multi-thousand word territory, and frankly, we’re not invested enough to give it that much time and headspace.
Simply put, you’re gathering and creating resources for the gods, getting yourself some workers to make more resources, and then presenting them all to your divine overseers. Some players get rewarded based on how much of a certain item they have, others don’t. There are crafting rounds, sleeping rounds, gathering rounds, and frankly it’s all so hectic that it was hard to get a solid grasp on things during the first few “cycles” (or days? not sure what the term was used by the demo team).
Fans of European style board games will, in all honesty, probably love this game. The turn-based / real-time design will be exciting and fresh, and once players get into the cyclical rhythm of the presentation, strategies are sure to develop and become increasingly complex.
Unfortunately, the Sumer aspect is really just an artistic / conceptual overlay, so Faith is still waiting for that Mesopotamian gaming title she’s always dreamed of…
