The Settlers 7

A long time ago (in blog time), I was involved with creating The Settlers: Rise of an Empire game with Blue Byte software. The game was also called The Settlers 6, and the series has been very successful in Europe (S6 won a writing award, among other awards - woo-hoo) but did not get as much traction in the US, which was a pity, since the sandbox-medieval-village-builder with military options was a cool design (oh, and it had a good story as well).

Time moves on, and now Settlers 7, or rather Settlers: Paths to a Kingdom has been announced. I didn't have anything to do with this one, but a friend sent me the link showing off the first advertisement for it. And it is really, really cool. I really like how the Settlers series is going back to its early, more cartoon-like roots in character design and animation, and the cinematic captures the major points of the game - the world-building, the upgrading of structures, the interesting characters, and the fact that combat is a component of the game, not the dominant activity.

I look forward to this release, and point it out to guys in the States, since games like this get buried in the latest FP shooter.

More later,