Pharaoh

About Pharaoh

Pharaoh (1999) is Impressions Games' isometric city-builder set in Ancient Egypt, built on Caesar III's engine, in which players grow Nile settlements into great cities and raise pyramids on the way to becoming Pharaoh.

Pharaoh in Depth

Players oversee the construction and management of Ancient Egyptian cities, micro-managing everything needed to keep citizens fed, employed, healthy and safe from disease, disaster and war. Housing plots attract immigrants, and homes improve automatically when demands for goods, services and pleasant surroundings are met. Floodplain farms by the Nile and irrigation ditches are new, as are hunting and fishing boats, and clay, reeds and stone are turned into pottery, papyrus and building materials or traded with other cities. Firehouses and police stations are separate, the palace acts as treasury, and monuments, a new feature, take time and dedicated workers and materials to build. Five gods, Ra, Bast, Osiris, Ptah and Seth, grant gifts or disasters, so that Osiris might improve or spoil the Nile flood. Warfare is secondary, with infantry, archers, chariots and, new to the series, naval combat.

The campaign moves through five periods of Egyptian history, from nomad settlements to grand cities, with players promoted until they become Pharaoh, often choosing between peaceful and military missions. The game keeps to the order of real events, monuments, wars, disasters and the reigns of notable pharaohs, though it uses the deben as a currency, unlike real Egypt. Free-build mode offers about a dozen scenarios and a map editor.

Making Pharaoh

Impressions Games created Pharaoh using the engine and principles of Caesar III, making it the first in Sierra's City Building series to focus on another ancient civilisation, and Sierra Studios published it for Windows in November 1999. It received favourable reviews: Next Generation said that "pyramid building and floodplain management come together for a brilliant city builder", and GamePro, while finding "nothing new under the sun" apart from a soundtrack that aged "like something left out too long under the hot Egyptian sun", recommended it as doing what Caesar III did "with equal panache". It was an AIAS finalist for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, losing to Final Fantasy VIII. It was a hit in Germany, earning a Gold award for 100,000 sales and spending 13 months in Media Control's top 30, and combined worldwide sales with Caesar III passed a million by July 2000. Pharaoh Gold bundled it with Cleopatra in 2001, and Zeus: Master of Olympus followed in 2000.