City of Atlantis Promises to be a Fabulous Strategy Game, but There's a Hitch
Nice graphics, extensive gameplay and interesting variety. City of Atlantis seems to lack nothing to interest fans of economic strategies. If only it weren't for one small problem.
City of Atlantis promises to be an interesting proposition for fans of economic strategies in ancient realities. Revealed a year ago, the game attracted attention with a nice trailer, available below.
How the Atlantis (didn't) sink
The basic premise of the game does not differ from the formula known from Caesar, Zeus: Lord of Olympus and many other economic strategies. As the administrator of a mythical city-state, we will rule ten provinces, taking care of the proper functioning of Atlantis.
The player will have to watch out not only for internal matters (access to water and food, education, etc.), but also for external invaders. With other countries we will be able to establish various relations, sending merchant... or military fleets.
An interesting mechanic will be the reference to the mythical fate of Atlantis. In the course of the game we will have to expand the city in such a way as to minimize the risk of the metropolis sinking under the sea waves. If this element is implemented well, this survivalist sauce, so to speak, can set the game apart from the competition.
City of Atlantis will be released on PCs in an unspecified future. Which, unfortunately, leads us to a certain disturbing issue.
Tsunami is coming, but where is City of Atlantis and other economic strategies from not-at-all-Playway?
The invisible invasion of Polish "builders"
Although not shown on the game's Steam product card, the actual publisher of the title is Polish company PlayWay. Hence, for example, the presence of trailers of City of Atlantis on the company's youtube channel. The company is known for - let's call it that - original, but not necessarily high-budget games. This in itself is no reproach, since among these titles are a couple of successful games, including the popular House Flipper.
More worrying is that PlayWay has many titles similar to City of Atlantis. In develeopment are said to be three announced installments of the Builders series, and on Steam there are economic strategy cards that have or had a very similar name. These include. Mythos: Build & Survive (formerly Mythos: Slavic Builder) and Viking City Builder (in theory independently published by Titan GameZ, but it was PlayWay that released the game's trailer).
Such a huge number of similar games can evoke associations with a clone army. What's worse, each of these entries - including City of Atlantis - not only remains unreleased, but also has no set release date.
Stay tuned for updates
Also developers from Gambit Games and MeanAstronauts have quite a few games in development. The former has, for now, completed the strategy game Aircraft Carrier Survival, which has met withmixed reception on Steam.
It is also worth noting that since the announcement of City of Atlantis the developers have not released any new information about the project. Therefore, already at the end of last year, some Steam users began to wonder if the trailer was more of a concept than an actual game.
Admittedly, the developers immediately assured that the project was being developed and players should look out for news on the publisher's Discord channel. If only there had actually been any updates there about City of Atlantis since then...
