You are the new head of your country, and it is up to you to protect and feed your people, grow your economy and conquer your neighbors! Will you be destroyed or become the undisputable Emperor?
"The weather was superb my Lord. This year's harvest is plentiful!" Will you celebrate and feast with your people or will you stock grains in prevision of more difficult years. Will you attract immigrants and grow your economy or play it safe?
Set your taxes, invest in the grain market or your infrastructure and conquer and protect your country from beligerent neighbors. Grow your influence and become the Emperor.
This turn-based game aims at short sessions and can be played up to 6 players on the same playdate!
Here are a few screenshots A fully developped country
Select your actions
Each year, your people will strive or die depending on your actions
It is indeed inspired by some old games from the 80s era. I actually played this as a kid on an AMSTRAD PC1512.
I aim at recreating a similar experience but with enhanced graphics, interface but also fix some of the things I didn't like about the game.
Have you played something similar before?
You are spot on! It is a variation of it but it is inspired by Hamurabi, you are correct. This game is actually inspired by a game inspired by Hamurabi so there are some changes. I am also trying to build a nicer interface than just "text", so hopefully it will be more appealing.
I am not sure anyone under 40 would actually bother trying a text based game unfortunately
There was an old BBS game, that took inspiration from the same Hamurabi core concept. Funny, I remember the name of the BBS I played it on (Ethereal Realm), but not the name of the game itself. Probably a variation on Empire since it was around the same time as Space Empire Elite, Galactic Empire, and so on. I do remember that the ranks of the players were titles, so you'd have Baron, Count, and so on.
Yeah it is very similar in concept. You also have all the (localized) titles in this game and you win when you reach the title of Emperor (or its equivalent).
I haven't had time to make progress on the game recently but still want to complete it.
I expect quite a bit of work on the balancing section so will need some feedback!
Thanks for your interest!
I wanted to give a bit of an update on how the dev is going with Empire.
Quite a bit was added since the last time:
First you can attack and finally invade other countries:
There is an option for speeding up the fight. Your battles allow to conquer more lands as well as potentially destroy some key infrastructure of your opponents. Remember that a well fed army is more efficient in combat!
It means, you need to manage your treasury, as well as your grain. Luckily you can sell land back to the Barbarians or use the grain market to buy grain to feed your army or population, or just profit to invest in your town and build more efficient infrastructure. The bigger your army and your palace the more lands you can conquer!
There is still quite a bit of work to be done: sound, graphics and more importantly balancing! AI is on its way!
Any comments welcome!
Yeah, I wasn't too sure about it to be honest. Tried a few things and picked this view. Still on the fence, but the straight lines felt well... straight... Glad you noticed and enjoyed it!
Thanks @Hank123 !
I continue to work and improve the game. The gameplay loop is ready but I still wish to add more options and events before the official release.
That BBS game was Barren Realms Elite. The one I knew was much simpler than the 1999 version tho I didn’t do too much for what less I could do; the game was at least more complex than Food Fight. Also there were barely other players to interact with.
As for text game players a few under40s stream NetHack on Twitch but Dwarf Fortress gets much more activity. There’s a automated Infocom synthwave channel that no one plays on.
How did I find this game? At the end of 2024 I decided to build up my Twitch watchlist of games I’d watch—most of which is based on my Like List of over 600 games on many platforms—which includes the simple Strategolike Empire on Wintel, tho I was only familiar with the demo version of the Mac Empire Master which isn’t listed on Twitch, Empire Classic, and Strategic Conquest. There was another entry for Empire that had this cover image and when I tried to search the logo I only found a clothing store. After emails with Twitch I found that the directory is taken from IGDB which unlike Twitch lists the platforms of games so there I found that the entry was for the Playdate!
I wish the name weren’t simply Empire, for priority. You did a good capture of late 1980s TBS. Some players however may like this theme in all text like the BBS days. I usually play NetHack and roguelikes without tilesets tho for the extra reasons so that I don’t need to learn what all the images mean and to cut down on clutter/noise/gore.
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