HomeNewsEl Dorado: The Golden City Builder
Ancient city builder El Dorado has a free prologue, with some angry gods to appeaseJust don’t say “Maya”
Just don’t say “Maya”
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gameparic, Games Incubator
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gameparic, Games Incubator
Basically the only sort ofstrategygames I like are city builders, so I was interested in the playtest forEl Dorado: The Golden City Builder, which casts you as the leader of an ancient Mayan-ish city. The playtest is only the prologue, but the eventual goal is to take over the Yucatán peninsula, and if nothing else it’s refreshing to see a city-builder that doesn’t feel overwhelmingly European. It also has a complicated system of religion. Whereas in a similarly polytheistic game like Zeus, the gods would turn up to stomp on buildings and/or bless them, at fairly large intervals, in El Dorado I was getting a home immolated every few days. Building shrines that have an area of effect, and that require resources to run and protect your town, is its own supply chain in El Dorado. This is a very interesting idea that I liked.
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I don’t know who specifically was involved in making this, so it is very possible that the devs (based in Warsaw in Poland) have familial links to Mesoamerica or South American indigenous peoples, and are exploring their own heritage. This game apparently gets into enslaving neighbouring cities and human sacrifices, so hopefully there’s some sincere research going on in any case. I don’t know enough to be able to make a call, and I didn’t get close to the darker parts of the game, so I’d be super interested to hear from someone who does and can when the full game is released.
With Hun Hunahpu’s constellation unlocked I could build shrines to him around the city, and their areas of influence stopped him going all arsonist on everything. His shrines would only work with a supply of maize from my farms, and he is sometimes identified with the Maya maize god - implying that at the very least someone at Gameparic read the same Wikipedia page I just did.
Legally distinct ancient civilisation |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Gameparic, Games Incubator
You can request access to the playtest now, viaEl Dorado’s Steam page, but the prologue’ll be out for everyone in a week, on January 30th. I’d be interested to hear what other people think.
