Immortal Cities - Children of the nile



Pharaoh did pretty well for itself back in the day. Impressions continued with their style of city planning and made it better, enough so to capture my heart and attention for hours and hours and hours. Regardless of how great the game actually was, it still had its share of problems and begged to be improved. It happens that a bunch of the guys from Impressions picked up shop and moved on to other things... sort of. In fact, they picked up to form another company called Tilted Mill in order to make another game much like the old Impressions city builders. This time, the object was to create a more accurate simulation of life in ancient Egypt by centering on the people instead of the buildings. Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile certainly succeeded in some ways that I enjoyed, but faltered in others. I had fun with Tilted Mills' first title as a team, but it's missing enough to keep it from being great.

On the superficial surface, Children of the Nile's 3D engine (Empire Earth) and graphics are part of that simultaneous steps forward and backward. The engine, while a tad bit dated, is still decent, allowing for a lot of motion and people on screen at the same time. Seeing a bunch of people scamper out to the fields like ants to the harvest is very cool. Lighting and shadow also makes the game look pretty good when zoomed out to a decent point of view.

The problem doesn't seem to be with the engine as much as the art style which is a little bit stale compared to Pharaoh. There's not as much personality, detail, or fun in any of the new textures compared to the old 2D isometric view as well as some ugly things such as the strange gigantic square quarries, lack of blending between roads and paths, and the short draw distance that creates an ugly thick fog at the edge of vision. The attention to detail just isn't as fulfilling as it has been. Just take a look at the two images below for comparison between the two games and see if you don't agree. On the left we have Pharaoh's temple complex and on the right is the new cult temple in Children of the Nile.

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