Dark Age Wars is a real-time strategy game set in Medieval Western Europe that is currently in public beta and free to play. The first offering from young-gun game designer Robert Moran and the Pixabit company, DAW is a browser-based game that offers in-depth strategic game play similar to Europa Universalis and great immersion through impressive artwork.
As you build up your kingdom with infrastructure, you get honor points
The world of DAW is inhabited by rival players and rebel settlements. Players start off as a young squire on a plot of land with little infrastructure. They must fight and conquer other rebel and player settlements to expand into a kingdom. To complete this grand task of they must construct buildings, maintain an efficient fighting force and gather and obtain valuable resources.
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The social network offered by the game allows players to build alliances with other players, form complex strategies with allies, trade valuable resources with trusted friends and, of course, gives Machiavellian players the opportunity to back-stab each other. The diplomacy menu allows players to manage their alliances and view the stats of rival alliances.
The game is free to play but it’s addicting, and once you get competitive you will find yourself itching to log into Pay Pal to buy some "gold." Gold can be used in Dark Age Wars to speed up construction of buildings and units, to hire advisors that give you impressive economic and military bonuses, to buy resources, to expand your build queue and to purchase items that give bonuses to units and buildings.
ArmchairGeneral.com: Tell us a bit about Pixabit and the team that is currently developing Dark Age Wars.
Robert Moran: Pixabit is a privately owned company, founded in 2007. Since then we have been building browser-based games. When I was a young gamer, I played a lot of Age of Kings and a lot—I mean a lot—of Age of Empires. I was really into it! I loved playing those types of PC games, so I wanted to build a game that encompassed those qualities. I also wanted to make a game that you could play without having to load up a CD on your hard drive.
ACG: Dark Age Wars is currently in public beta. When does Pixabit plan on releasing the final version of the game?
RM: Right now we are working with a European publisher. The German version of the game will be released in the beginning of August. The Polish, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and American versions of the game will be released in late August.
ACG: Will Dark Age Wars only be available for North American and European countries?
RM: Well, yes and no. Dark Age Wars will only be localized for those countries, meaning that the game itself can only be played in those languages, but if someone from Brazil wanted to sign up and play they could, but they wouldn’t have an option to play the game in Portuguese. So anyone can play the game, but we are aiming the game toward the North American and European markets.
ACG: I was impressed with the artwork in the game. Why did you have your team create elaborate artwork not usually found in browser-based strategy games?
RM: I wanted this game to resemble artwork in your average strategy PC video game. The graphics and detailed artwork allows the player to be fully immersed in the game. I mean, one of the first comments I get from new beta players is like, “WOW! This game looks just like Age of Empires! And the graphics are amazing.”
ACG: It seems that different military units have unique bonuses and weaknesses depending on the type of military units they fight. For example, light cavalry are great against archers but do very poorly against spearman. Can or will the player have the ability to organize their forces to take greater advantage of these bonuses found in different military units?
RM: Well, with the current battle system, you just send your army into the enemy territory and apart from building up your forces to counter what the enemy has in his base, there is no way to dictate how your different units fight and interact with each other. There is no formation or strategies besides the basic rock, paper, scissors system. Although if you know what units your opponent has then you can decide to send the counter-unit to attack.
ACG: Your diplomacy options allow the player to create agreements and easy-to-manage alliances. Do you have any plans to implement an automated trading system to allow players to exchange resources?
RM: There actually already is a way you can trade resources. You just need to expand your warehouse into a market. Then once your city has a market, you are able to trade resources with your other cities that also have a market. You can trade resources with other players who have cities with markets as well. Players have the ability to trade every type of resource except for gold.
ACG: Back in the days of commercial play-by-mail games prior to the Internet age, some companies were criticized for requiring players to pay more in actual cash in order to have better spaceships or what-have-you. Accordingly, he who spent the most cash was most likely to win. What is your response to players who may feel that buying more Gold in the game, via PayPal, is the same situation?
RM: Well, the game is free to play, and we are a company. Any corporation and/or business organization must make capital to prosper and thrive. We want every player to be competitive and to have a great experience with the game. So the trick is that we tried to make the premiums not overpowering but beneficial enough so that they give players an incentive to buy some gold to speed up build times or buy bonuses and what have you … I mean we’ve got to make our money back some way, right?
ACG: I am currently playing the public beta for Dark Age Wars and am having a great time building up a kingdom that will hopefully become an empire. One game-play element that still confuses me is the aspect of Honor. How does Honor affect the player and the game in general?
RM: Honor is the scoring system. Basically, you get a certain amount of points for every building. As you build up your kingdom with infrastructure, you get honor points for those buildings. As your honor grows, so does your player rank and the overall rank of your alliance. In the game, if I were to take a kingdom from you, I would gain all your honor points and you would lose all those points previously attributed to your former kingdom. So you gain a lot of honor at once by conquering new kingdoms and, likewise, you will lose a lot of honor from having your kingdoms conquered.
ACG: Dark Age Wars will be Pixabit’s first real-time strategy game. Will Pixabit continue to produce more games of this type in the future? If not, what projects can we look forward too?
RM: We are planning on building another strategy game that will be set in space called Empire of Planets. The game is inspired from the game Starcraft. There will be three intergalactic species competing against each other, but the game will be browser based. We also are working on another pirate-themed role-playing game called Pirate Quest.
About the Author:
Nuccio Africanus is the alter ego of author and famed Total War player John Nuccio, who was given the infamous nickname by his Latin teacher, after demolishing said teacher in a battle of Rome Total War. The defeated academic remarked that Nuccio’s tactics were second only to the legendary Roman General Scipio Africanus himself. The alter ego took on a life of its own in Total War series forums, where Nuccio Africanus is widely known for his threads and blogs on strategy gaming—as well as for his humorous antics. The self-proclaimed demi-god is working on a children’s book as well as a board wargame that will hopefully be published in the near future.
Great article. I love Age of Empires but I’ll definitely check this one out too. Looks pretty sweet.