Oasis
Ages: Everyone

Well, I looked at the box art in this game. Seems that as Pharaoh you must rescue your land from the barbarians, develop weapons, discover lost treasure, find power glyphs, develop technology, encourage powerful engineers and generals to come to your aid, gather a following, uncover cities, build roads and manage your resources. ou must do all of that and still fight off the barbarians. Oh yeah!

This little game from Play First can be downloaded for a 30 minute trial -- but you might as well buy it because you will get hooked. To review a casual game -- I figured half an hour -- well, hours went by and I didn't even finish all the tutorials. The tutorials, ten of them are just like playing the game except you keep on getting hints. Casual games do not come with lengthy written instructions and so, with this game in particular, to get the most fun out of it, play the tutorial.

The graphics and animation are very effective. You watch your people assemble to build and fight -- watch cities go down in fire and finally, with your skill at choosing which city will be your prime defense, winning the battle. It is a manageable strategy game where your options become obvious after your first three or four failures.

The game is played on squares and you have only a certain number of moves to uncover your cities, build roads, plan your defenses, mine for technology, before the barbarians attack. The timing is well done. You can plan in leisure but once the barbarians attack you have only seconds for your final strategy.

It is a unique "casual" game because of the amount of tactics involved. It's not exactly Age of Empires but it definitely engages you into the same kind of planning and strategy.

Reviewed by: Editor - 09/06