Builders of Egypt: Prologue

I'm really on the fence, here. I feel that the game is not really very suitable in its current state. Why? I studied Ancient Near Eastern History at university. However, the first thing I encountered was a never-ending monologue detailing the development of early civilization in Egypt. I got bored and overwhelmed, and just clicked to end that. In the game, you are FORCED to build a ton of stuff without ever actually playing the game. What the developers have missed: Take it slow. The old Pharaoh game had you first build huts and a well. Then, you built food production and fire-protection. The first food production was more food procurement, in keeping with early-development. THEN, you moved on to digging out clay and producing pottery. Devs and Design-Team: Set-up missions. Let people learn and master the game mechanics 2-3 at a time, then set them up alone for the next mission. This creates a comfortable and natural progression. Sand-box is there to throw people into the deep-end. In its current state, I cannot recommend it. You need to go back to the design table. You have GREAT information!!!! Clearly, someone is either an Egyptologist, or put a lot of work into background research. However, a seasoned game-designer is missing here. Someone, who understands the psychology of the type of players, who play these games.

[B]EDIT: It shows product received for free because I refunded the full game and can't review it so I have to review it on the free product since I refunded the full game.[/b] Not in a good shape, the graphics are/were horrendously poor when zoomed out on epic and cinematic levels. I had one person marked as a developer tell me that what she is seeing is that my settings are on ultra low when they were all EPIC and one set to cinematic, that tells me how they look at their game with rose tinted glasses if what I showed which was epic and cinematic settings looked to them as ultra low settings. But wanting to give them a full shake I upped all possible settings to cinematic and it still looked like hot steamy garbage. As far as game play, it does some things good but does too much wrong like the trade system, it's unorganized and overly difficult. I think it's a case of developers looking at and playing the game so much that they've retained muscle memory on how the game works, whereas in the forums it has people telling them the same thing, that the trade system is bad, bad, uber-bad. Next up, sandbox mode. You have one map only to play on and they have it set up that we must win the campaign to use those maps in sandbox (assumed but no developer has disputed it before publishing this review) so if you're not a campaign player and love sandbox playing you may not like this game. Product refunded so I'm not allowed to review the full product which this is for but have to review the prologue which hopefully shows up in the full game reviews since everything related to the prologue links to the full game discussions, reviews, etc anyway. I think it has some promise but developers don't seem to want to change as evidenced by some of their comments in the game forum where it's been noted that some of them are more of a "nope, no, nope, no way in hell" kind of mode with regards to the game that turned out so poor even though they worked on it supposedly for 6 or 7 years according to what I've read. If you still want to try it, please do, BUT, [b]keep an alarm set for 1 hour 45 minutes[/b] so you can refund it if it's not up to your desires, and if it is and you enjoy playing it, that;s great! Below was the developers response to another players negative but fair review, if you choose to believe in them that's great, I hope your right, however just seeing him state as a sole developer of the game just fills me with the thought that their won't be any huge changes but rather simple things that are easy fixes but I wouldn't expect a major overhaul of the interface or trade system since a "developer - not him" thinks it's all fine. "StrategyLabs  [developer] Posted: Jan 10 @ 11:12pm My job as a solo developer was to deliver the best possible game. The game grew a lot as a result of my over-ambition for this project. I apologize if the game does not meet your expectations. Doing quick updates is just to let players know that I'm here, I'm not giving up and I'll keep improving the game." As a side note, if he's a solo developer who is the other person marked with the developer tag? Maybe the other one should be marked as a moderator instead if he/she is not truly a developer but if the other person is a developer than maybe don't claim solo developer. [b] Just a thought.[/b] After reading the statement by the developer again, I have to wonder what this game would have been like without his over-ambition, as it's pretty bad and loose now, what would it have been without this over-ambition, an empty game that just flashes it's name on our screen? Seriously because it's not very deep, not deep at all.

I wanted to be excited about this game, but my feelings on this right now are just... meh. I'm going to give it more time to cook, after all, this is Day 1 and there is a lot of room for improvement, but I sincerely hope that the devs are still working on adding more content. Otherwise, this game will just stay... meh.

Alright so, 15 mins spent trying to close the Region Map and failed. UX is bad, graphics is bad, uninstalling

Needs work. Played the Demo, nothing exciting here, nothing to make me want to play this thing.

"Builders of Egypt: Prologue" is not a game. It's an advertisement for a product called "Builders of Egypt". Builders of Egypt is a rather shoddy and unpolished re-make of an older city building game called Pharoah... kinda like SimCity but with pyramids. And sure, such a game could be a pure winner, but the developers rushed it out in a barely playable state and have done little to nothing to properly address the issues with their product. But this isn't completely relevant because this is not Builders of Egypt, it's just an advertisment for it, so it's not correct to try to review that completely distinct product. We must instead review this for what it is... an advertisement. If you enjoy advertisements, you can consume them for free on the web or on Youtube without needing to add them to your game library, download them, and then launch the advertising. It's impossible in a general sense to recommend people should do that over playing real, full games on Steam, and that applies here with "Builders of Egypt: Prologue" too. The purpose of this advertisement is to get you to shell out a whopping $20 USD to buy the full product, and I don't recommend you do that either, it's a buggy mess, and yet despite not having enough time to fix the bugs, they're already working on a couple of other games at the same time. Yes, gamers see when developers do things like that, and it demonstrates a lack of sincerity from the developer. Take a leaf out of Hello Game's book, and look how they turned around the disaster that is No Man's Sky... anyway, I digress. This is just an advert. This is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time. It's important to understand there's a formal process to create a demo/page for a game which hasn't been followed here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace. It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers. Advertisements and incorrectly published demos don't add +1 to your game collector count, they aren't full games. It's impossible for me to recommend this incorrectly published advertising spam to gamers, you deserve better than adverts.

По сути, это такая ностальгическая прогулка по старой школе градостроев в духе Pharaoh или Caesar, где надо прокладывать дороги, следить за потребностями жителей и налаживать производственные цепочки, но всё это заточено под одну обучающую миссию без сохранений, которую можно пройти часика за полтора. С одной стороны, графика на Unreal Engine радует глаз, видно каждую пальму и тень на пирамиде, а с другой - жители бегают одинаковые, как солдаты-близнецы, и иногда тупят в дверях. Есть в этом всём своя прелесть: включить x6 скорости, понаблюдать, как твой городок оживает, и почувствовать себя древним египетским чиновником, который разбирается с кризисом перепроизводства соломы. В общем, если вы фанат старых стратегий и хотите бесплатно погрустить по ушедшей эпохе, когда игры заставляли думать - залетайте, а если нужен современный градострой с полным функционалом, то лучше сразу идите в полную версию, только там, говорят, тоже не всё гладко с балансом и багами. Если вдруг этот мой спич наберёт 50 лайков и 10 наград, я: куплю наконец полную версию на распродаже, поиграю 100 часов, значок улучшу и реально пойду в церковь, поставлю свечку разрабам, чтоб они и дальше клепали крутые проекты, а не только дразнили нас кусочками.

The whole economy (Bread) is just plain broken. 2 missions in and its less than MEH. Needs a whole lot of fixing from economy to trade etc etc. Lots of patches before this even remotely playable.

OMG, schon wieder so ein Tutoriual, bei dem man die Lust am Spiel verliert. Nach ein paar Minuten im Tutorial soll ich die Regionalkarte öffnen um eine Handelweg einzurichten, soweit so gut. Wenn das fertig ist, soll ich die Regionalkarte wieder schließen - UND BITTE WIE??? Es gibt bei Popup Fenster kein "x" zum Schließen und ich schaffe es nicht die Vollbild Regionalkarte zu schließen. Klicke überall rum, Icons, Menüs etc. aber nix. Tutorial abgebrochen und Spiel deinstalliert. Was für eine Enttäuschung.