A New Game To Try
Since it’s the school holidays I thought I’d tell you about an online game which I discovered via Tim Ryland’s Blog. The game is called Ikariam and it’s about life in ancient times. You need to register (it’s free) and then you play the game online.
The sound of the sea, a white sandy beach and sun! On a small island somewhere in the Mediterranean, an ancient civilisation arises. Under your leadership an era of wealth and discovery begins. Welcome to Ikariam.
From Tim Ryland’s It’s a free web based game that allows you to start and expand a civilization. The cool thing about it is that you can login, set something in motion (e.g. upgrade the town hall) and then log off again.
The game keeps going while you’re away, so that you can leave it for a few hours, days or even weeks, and when you log back in again, your town hall is built, your citizens are happily collecting wood, making wine from the grapes they’ve collected and having a drink in the tavern when they finish work.
One of the most important things to do in the game is to establish a research centre, where your citizens can find out about the many different skills, trades and abilities that are available in the game.
Research can follow a number of different paths. You can choose to focus on your military, which will enable you to protect yourself from would-be attackers; or maybe you want to focus your attention on the sciences, allowing you access to new items such as paper and ink, which will allow you to form better trade agreements, and so on.
What makes this game so enticing, is that while there is a huge amount you can do with it (some features taking over a year to establish), it’s actually very simple to play. Most of it’s pretty intuitive. If there’s something you aren’t too sure of, there’s also extensive help documentation.
To read more of what Tim has to say about this game go to his blog post.
