It's all Greek to me (ikariam.org)

Member Name: dangaroo

Product:	ikariam.org
Date:	10/10/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, easy to play, in many languages

Disadvantages: Don't be put off if you get pillaged!

I recently came across this web browser based game called Ikariam, there aren't really a lot of web browser based games that I find impressive, the applications on facebook certainly don't excite me. Benefits of this are obvious, more or less instant loading time - no need to download anything on to your laptop or pc and access from anywhere, providing of course you remember your password.

Ikariam is a simple enough strategy game but the amount of real players, certainly brings it to life. You start the game off with a small town with a small population, you can then build up your city with the funds earned by your citizens, send some to the woods to chop building materials and the rest to make use of whatever resource is on the island (this is usually grape for wines, sulphur, marble or crystal), these in turn can be traded with neighbouring towns, all resources are needed to build and keep your city strong.

The Ancient Greeks weren't the type to shy away from the battle either it would seem, you can build up your forces and naval prowess as the game goes along, pillage neighbouring islands, set up colonies and combat corruption on your island by keeping everyone happy. The bigger you build your empire, the harder it is to maintain, some people may find the game a bit slow as it takes several hours to do things like building buildings and loading ships. The speed of the game is something that really suits me, I like going for a cheeky click at work or a couple after work and not worrying too much about it!

There are numerous worlds on offer, I've only played in "Alpha" - I do hope to check out the others at some point though.

www.ikariam.org

Summary: Worth a fiddle