RATING:
Pros: Lots of features and a huge community to fight or work alongside.
Cons: No music or sounds, building things can take a long time which can put some players off.
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Performance: 7
Overall: 7
For our newest review we take a look at the free to play browser-based city building MMO Ikariam from German developers Gameforge, unlike our typical reviews whilst we normally start with a brand-new account, the company have provided us with a fully developed account including some free Ambrosia premium currency to play around with.
This is all in line with Ikariam reaching a massive milestone as it approaches seven years since its initial launch, so we thought it a fitting moment to check out the game and see just what is on offer for this real-time strategy set in ancient Greece. The game has hit milestone after milestone over the years since it's been launched, constantly adding in new features, rebalancing the systems, adding in new buildings and upgrading graphics to make sure the game is constantly fresh for new players and has earned itself a number of accolades including "Best Browsergame 2009" (Deutscher Computerspielpreis) and Browsergame of the Year 2011 (Browsergameoftheyear).
The game first began development in March 2007 with a small six-person team, this skeletal crew managed to create a game that when released just under a year later became an instant hit bringing in over 1 million players after just three months on its launched German server and the subsequent International server that followed shortly after.
Community is one of the big things we noticed with the game and a quick glance at the world map shows just how many islands are out there waiting for players to attack or open up trade negotiations with other real-world players, the game is played in 36 different languages and has 68 million registered players as well as over 1 million accessing the game through Facebook.
For us we stepped into this game seven years later after a constant reshuffle of features and mechanics to see the game that exists today, a feature-packed browser MMO that leaves players spoilt for choice on what to do and above all else has a real sense of cooperative and community-based content (but more on that later). Given the variety of features we had to go back and load up a new account to run through the tutorial to give is a bit more of an idea of what we could do with our fully formed town; what we saw with the new towns were empty plots of land where players are able to construct their own choice of buildings on. We were guided through the tutorial showing the basics of resource, population and time management, which ultimately are the core fundamentals of the game.
Our provided account didn't leave us with all that much to do as the town was already fully formed, we had more resources than we knew what to do with and enough Ambrosia to play around in the shop should we require it. With a vacant plot of land we constructed an Embassy building, which typically takes over an hour to construct of real-world time just giving you an idea of how long actions can take. Similarly, when we zoomed out from our town view and checked out the island that we inhabited, we assembled a ship with crew and resources to colonise one of the free plots of land remained on the island to create a new town. Whilst players may feel they have to scramble to try and take as many plots that they can it really isn't necessary, there is a strong island community vibe encouraged with the game. Players can work cooperatively with other island neighbours to build up the various features that they can all benefit from such as a communal quarry, Barbarian village (which acts as a source of resources when pillaged), and more.
Whether building up an Alliance or declaring war, players will have to build and expand, bring in more resources and protect the ones they have from other players trying to pillage them, the game has a constant plate spinning feel when you have a lot of things going on at the same time that all seem to need your attention.
Our provided Ambrosia allowed us to examine the in-game shop which provides a variety of boosts and also a cute festive snow-themed pack that during the winter period made everyone's town covered in snow and forced their NPC advisers to wrap up with scarves and woolly hats; players have a chance to extend this new look for a little longer for a few Ambrosia.
Our experience with the game was promising showing a game that definitely has a lot to offer and a lot of unique features to keep players interested, our only major criticism was the lack of sounds and music in the game; albeit if we were playing for ourselves we would probably have them muted anyway so no major loss.
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