I wasn’t go to buy this for £3.99, after it unexpectedly went up in price from £2.99. But I had the credit in my account and it felt like such a Sunday game that yesterday I gave in and downloaded it.

Good decision, bad decision?


I won’t keep you in suspense. It was a good decision. Definitely.

The first three tutorial levels didn’t seem to be teaching me much. After completing them I still felt slightly baffled and started the fourth mission – the first that doesn’t tell you what to do step by step – with some trepidation. However, after a bit of messing around with icons and menus I started to feel more comfortable and soon had a thriving economy going… which, after a couple of hours, ground to a halt. My gold mines seemed to be the first to stop producing, following by coal mines and soon I was unable to produce any soldiers. I had a look around and the problem seemed to be a lack of fish. I had a fishing hut, but it wasn’t producing anything. So I built another one, which didn’t produce anything, either.

I scratched my head for a while, before having a eureka moment. It turned out that, in messing about with the icons at some point, I’d set my fisherman to try and catch fish on land, so obviously he wasn’t doing anything. The second fishing hut I’d managed to build too far away from the water, so this fisherman was also doing nothing. I told both fisherman that, yes, they should look in the sea for fish and my economy started working again. Soon I had gold and swords and was able to finish off the Vikings on the west side of the map. Hooray! A delayed victory, but a victory nonetheless – and one that taught me a lot about the game.

Fantastic stuff – and gorgeous, too. Wonderfully animated, with tons of incidental detail that brings the world alive. A great, great game so far and I’m so glad I bought it.