And now it’s back, baby.
Pharaoh: A New Erameans I can play that game of my childhood on my shiny black RGB-lit bastard.
Honestly though, the “A New Era” part is a bit much.
My favourite Pharaoh-specific feature is the Nile.
You find yourself naturally setting up supply chains to work in rhythm with this rise and fall.
There are other small changes that make a surprising difference to how the game feels.
Freed from worrying about some of the unnecessary minutiae, you could worry about the necessary minutiae.
How much room is there on the flood plain for more grain farms?
Is Osiris mad at us because we threw a festival for Bast but not him?
Are we importing enough bricks for our monuments?
Do we need another work camp so we don’t take those workers away from the farms?
It’s nice to be mining clay and gathering reeds to make pots and papyrus.
The global worker pool just means that you cut out the middle-man.
That’s long-winded, but it’s a decent example to illustrate A New Era as a whole.
It smoothes out the rough edges of a now-retro game to make the experience of playing it more fun.
It doesn’t just look like you remembered Pharaoh looking, it looks better.
If you’re new to it, A New Era is the definitive version of a stone-cold classic.
Has the world moved on from Pharaoh?
You bet your dynastic ass.
But what a king it was, and A New Era preserves it very well.
