The Settlers Online preview
It must be strange, being The Settlers. Blue Byte’s original resource-collecting, town-building strategy game was instrumental in shaping its genre, but has had little to do with the wealth of browser-based equivalents that have run with the idea in the last couple of years. The Settlers Online, then, is a return of a kind.
At the highest level, this is Settlers as it has always been. To expand your town beyond the confines of your town hall and warehouse, you’ll need to gather resources and produce goods according to a technology tree that is dense with dependencies. Bread and fish to keep your population healthy, stone and wood for construction. As before, roads link your various buildings in a network of trade and production, from fishing huts on the cost to lumber mills and mines further inland. As a browser game, however, construction times now run from minutes to hours, and your progress happens alongside – and in collaboration with – thousands of other players.
With full games now running in Google Chrome, expectations of browser games are rising. The Settlers Online uses existing technology, but looks lovely with hand-drawn, colourful and richly textured buildings and landscapes. Rare among its peers, it’s fully-animated – villagers walk between locations, scaffolding rises around new constructions, workers chop and craft in yards and workshops.
Resources can be traded in a marketplace that keeps track of commodity prices as they rise and fall in real time. Have a surplus of wood? Trade it for stone or coal. The game lacks a singular currency of any kind, but the high cost of mining gold has, in the time the game has been running in Germany, led to its adoption as the standard measure of value. Just like real life! The dynamic economy is promising, and should add a sense of purpose to your efforts that traditional single-player Settlers lacked. If it’s robust enough to stay afloat and interesting months after launch – as has proved to be the case in Germany and France – then this could be the game’s standout feature.
It’s not all mining and trading, though. In order to free up land on your starting island, you’ll need to contend with bandit camps and other nasties beyond the fringes of your territory. This means pumping resources into creating armies, with various troop types, abilities, and leader units. Combat is a stat-heavy turn-based affair in the manner of Civilisation. Attack order is determined by a unit’s initiative score, and troops receive bonuses based on their location and status. It’s much more involved than you might expect, and it supports an additional system of quests and raids. Players can band together to take on tougher enemies and earn rewards on islands overseas. PVP is coming, too, which will allow the most competitive players to fight for territory.
Beyond the first few months after launch, Ubisoft’s plan is to expand The Settlers Online based on community feedback. That starts with the English beta, beginning in January – if you fancy being there at the start, click here to sign up.
