Children of the Nile is one of those games that’s crept upon us with little in the way of hype yet turns out to be a game that leaves you thinking, ‘Yes, I rather enjoyed that’. It certainly takes a markedly different approach from other similar looking games in the way it makes the player focus on the people in your cities rather than the various buildings and resources that also need to be juggled. Indeed, rather than a race to build the most impressive structures you soon realise that you need to pay close attention to the needs of each citizen and food, clothing, shelter and luxuries all need to be catered for.

So far so straightforward I hear you cry. You’re wrong though as the game has an abundance of different resources, which you need to be in control of, and you’re going to have to master a complex system that decides whether your citizens are happy or not. Not only this but religion plays a large part in proceedings and learning which statues to build at which part of the year is essential to the continue up-keep of your city. Once this is all mastered you’re going to need to learn how to trade and there’s even rudimentary combat options meaning this isn’t going to be a game that you finish in one sitting.

So you start the game with a small village with farms that need to be constructed and houses provided. Once the basics have been provided for your citizens will start getting greedy and demanding luxury items and the like and eventually civil buildings like schools and hospitals.

However, as your citizens increase their social status you must take care to ensure that the less fortunate amongst your city are still catered for which means that your farmers and labourers must be just as happy as your nobles if you’re to succeed. Ultimately it’s all a very delicate balancing act with the beauty of the game being in learning when and where to construct new buildings and finally to construct a pyramid to finally demonstrate your power.

It’s nice being able to play a game of this ilk without having to tell each and every citizen what to do and when to do it. They’ve enough intelligence to work it out for themselves and it shows. Naturally it’s also rather aesthetically pleasing watching them go about their daily business once you have a thriving city and the game’s pace is always set just right meaning you always have time to consider your next move.

Unfortunately the game does still have some flaws that let it down and stop it scoring higher. The religious needs of your city is often hard to figure out as you have to go through and click on every dwelling to see what God they worship which allows you to tailor your city accordingly. For a game that’s been so well thought out in other areas this is a rather alarming problem as once your city grows it can take an age to go through and do this. Less importantly is the lack of combat options, which gives you little control over proceedings and simply sees you being given the result of each battle without any chance to change the course of battle.

Ultimately though combat isn’t what the game’s about and whilst it’s sedate pace and functional graphics may put a lot of people off, for those of you that like this sort of thing there really isn’t much around at the moment that beats it.

79%

Deep and absorbing

Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile Review

79%