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Mobile strategy games can make you feel like you are a god — or goddess — as you successfully build your town town, defeat enemies who come to attack it and conquer new territories.
Now, gamers can take on the role of their favorite Greek gods, and be able release the wrath of none other than Zeus himself in the new game called Gods of Olympus that was released on Thursday for iOS.
Created by video game development studio Aegis Interactive, the mobile strategy game allows players to build, battle and rampage rival ancient empires as Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite and Artemis.
Instead of controlling entire armies with a touch, the team at Aegis Interactive (many of whom came from TimeGate Studios, which has a history of well-received real-time strategy games) decided to feature characters that the player controls in order to make its vision of creating a fun and true PC real-time strategy game for mobile platform a reality.
"We decided that using just a few ultra-powerful characters to destroy entire armies and cities just sounded way more cool and way more fun. For this smashing style of gameplay, we drew from some of our own favorites, like the old arcade game Rampage, or Gauntlet, where, with just a few characters, you could take on huge numbers of enemy units," Mark Doughty, Chief Design Officer for Aegis Interactive, told Tech Times.
Why feature Zeus and other gods?
"We liked that we could logically super-size those characters to make them really stand out from their enemies," Mark Doughty said. "They each have a lot of personality, great name recognition and lend themselves well to having very special and very cool abilities. We considered going monster-themed, but we just felt there was a lot of great material to work with using ancient Greek myth."
The player starts Gods of Olympus off as controlling Zeus. A brief tutorial shows the player the ropes, including how to build structures like an Arrow Tower and temples for their gods, which provides power, healing and unit boosts. There are battle and campaigns modes where the player is either tasked with defending their land or tap on the screen to send their god into the battle so that he or she may begin the attack. Just tap on the screen where you want them to go to next, making sure to always tear down the rival's temple in order to win.
Gods have three unique powers that can can be upgraded in order to make sure you win the battle.
"Fully control big Greek gods to obliterate big Greek cities using super cool god powers," Doughty answered when asked to describe the game.
Gods of Olympus has real-time cooperative play, so that the player can choose to help an ally defend their city or attack another empire.
"Join an alliance and get your friends and family to play at the same time," Doughty advises. "Group play sessions are super fun, but they also make winning battles easier and let you earn money faster."
If the game sounds a lot like other mobile strategy games like Clash of Clans, while the core concept is the same, it is actually quite different.
"First and foremost, our battle system is completely different. Our gods are completely user-controlled, super powerful and work on a power recharge system," Doughty said. "You start out with two gods and you can work your way up to six. In a game like Clash of Clans, you generally have a not very intelligent army taking on a bunch of towers. In our game, it feels like you have some superheroes taking on an extremely large army fortified inside a city. There is an endless stream of troops attacking your gods, and you are using just those few gods to dispatch them all. The number of troops in a battle can be in the thousands, and in some cases, a god casting a single power can take care of hundreds of those troops."
Another main difference is its the real-time simultaneous multiplayer, so that there can be more than 100 players duking it out at once in a battle.
"Your allies can place troops live, directly into the battle, to either help your gods or help defend your city. In practice, you often have four to five players helping you attack and take cities that you would not otherwise be able to conquer," he said. "As far as we know, we are the first game to do anything like this, and it is an incredibly cool and very, very fun feature."
Gods of Olympus also doesn't have any build times when creating your city or upgrading a building, which can often be frustrating and an obvious way games make it so players keep coming back. There are also no build limits, so players can go crazy with their city, and can also sell the structures and start over to create a new and unique city.
"We [also] have a positive battle economy and not a negative battle economy," Doughty explained. "What this means is that you do not ever need to fear you are going to lose all your resources in battle. You gain resources by attacking, and you gain resources when your city defends well! We have no shields because they simply are not necessary. So, attack as much as you can! You'll be rewarded for it, and I guarantee when you play again the next day, you'll still have that money as well as much more for your city's defenses against enemies."
The game is currently being featured by Apple as one of the best new games. Gods of Olympus is available to download for free for iOS.
