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Settlers Online BETA
Settlers Online is a new free-to-play
browser (real-time strategy) game that is based on the popular video
game series "The Settlers" which originally launched in 1993 on the
Amiga and PC. Since then, subsequent games from German Developers Blue
Byte Software have appeared on various platforms but this time the
series has been rejuvenated for online gamers. It's still in BETA and in
the coming months, this game will add lots of news features and I'm sure
it will be more stable.
Once
you have registered on the website
http://www.thesettlersonline.co.uk/ via Facebook or e-mail,
you need to pick your name and your avatar which will then load the game
via your browser. As it was a BETA, the game did have some slow downs
but this generally occurred once our town was a bustling city.
Once
in, you need to create your village in order for your Settles to come
and join. Gold, gems and timbre will play a key part of your success. Best of all, Settlers Online is not a
cut down version of the original PC game but rather, it's a fully
fledged game that not only pays homage to the original series but firmly
finds a place in the online world and more importantly, Facebook
integration.
With
that said, players are given a small village to develop and in similar
veins to Civilization and Age of Empires, your goal is to create a
viable and profitable village. Defensive also plays a key role for the
survival of your village and the more prosperous your village becomes,
the higher your cities reputation becomes which in earn allows new
settlers to migrate.
Like most games of this genre, resources are needed to be collected in
order for you to sustain your village and then divert these to research, military
or new buildings for example. This does unfortunately create a sense of grinding and
repetition. However as the game is connected to other Settlers players,
it does create a sense of wordly goodness, especially via Facebook.
Interestingly enough, this global setting works well and when you're
away from the game, your busy Settlers will still be attending the daily
activities of your village which means you do need to check in our
villages quite often. This will probably mean addiction for those that
find the Settlers Online experience an enjoyable one.
Final Thoughts
In
the end, it's great that the developers have relaunched this series
but it does stick to a tried and tested formula which does lack some
originality. Even so, it's definitely worth a look as it's free and I'm
really looking forward to the final version.
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