Pharaoh 1999

Is it still worth playing?

Impressions Games' 1999 city building game for Windows, set in ancient Egypt, where you keep citizens fed, employed, healthy and protected from disease, disasters and war. The campaign runs through five periods of Egyptian history and promotes you until you become Pharaoh. A city grows from its housing. Immigrants move into plots and upgrade them as demands for goods, services and surroundings are met. Those goods come from an economy built on the river: farms sit on the Nile floodplain, with irrigation ditches to boost fertility, clay becomes pottery, reeds become papyrus, and exports fund the city. On top of that sit five gods, Ra, Bast, Osiris, Ptah and Seth, appeased with shrines and temples, who bring gifts when pleased and disasters when angry. A city whose every need leads to another still keeps it worth tending today.