Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.6 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jason Ocampo
• Reviewed on: 11/11/2004
• Released on: 11/08/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile (PC) Review

Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile is a promising start for developer Tilted Mill, which was founded by veterans of Impressions, the studio responsible for early city-building games like Pharaoh and Caesar. If you're a veteran of those games, the important thing to keep in mind is that Children of the Nile is a fresh start for the genre. The developers took the opportunity to build a new game from the ground up, rather than recycle previous gameplay conventions and mechanics. The result is a game that has a lot of personality and some interesting city-building gameplay, but is weighed down by a few problems not found in some of the previous games of this type.

In Children of the Nile, you'll play as a series of pharaohs in Egypt's old, middle, and new kingdoms, which were the height of its power and influence as a civilization. Your goal is to increase your prestige, mainly by growing the size and power of your cities. The game features a grand campaign that allows you to take on a series of progressively more-difficult challenges, as well as a number of scenarios, several of which allow you to build a city from scratch. The game also features three excellent tutorials that will teach you everything you need to know.

What makes Children of the Nile different from previous games in the genre is its emphasis on the inhabitants of your cities. Unlike earlier city-building games, in which populations were abstracted using statistics, Children of the Nile models each and every inhabitant of your city, tracking them as they go about their daily lives. The result is that every character in the game belongs to a household and has needs that must be addressed, including food, health care, housewares, and religion. It's up to you to provide the necessary services by growing and maintaining a complex economy, but that's one of the joys of Children of the Nile, because the citizen-based model allows you to easily comprehend what's working in your city and, more importantly, what's not.

The backbone of your economy are the farmers, who plant and tend to their crops after the annual flooding of the Nile. To support these farmers, you'll need smaller numbers of common shopkeepers, such as pottery makers and basket weavers. These shopkeepers go out and gather resources such as papyrus and flax, and then return to manufacture and sell their goods. Nobles are needed to oversee vast farming estates, and in addition to common housewares, they require luxury goods and entertainment. You'll also need bricklayers, brick makers, stone carvers, overseers, priests, temples, hospitals, scribes, and a whole lot more to create a functional and thriving city. It's a tricky task, and most of your time in the game will be spent trying to keep everything in balance, even as you expand your city by leaps and bounds. But it's also a lot of fun, as your city looks and feels like a real, functioning city, as hundreds of citizens go about their daily lives.

In addition to achieving the objectives in each scenario, your ultimate goal as pharaoh is to keep your dynasty going over the years, as a typical scenario can easily run through several generations of pharaohs. In an age when most humans were considered very lucky to live to 40, a great deal of your time and effort will be spent on ensuring your immortality by building grand and lavish tombs, such as pyramids. Failure to prepare for the afterlife will exact a heavy toll on your prestige, which will make it tougher to build a flourishing city, because it will cut into the number of government workers--such as priests, scribes, and overseers--that you can manage.

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