The Settlers Review

Posted Sat 5th Jun 2010 1:25am by Gavin Lowe

The Settlers in 10 seconds

Thumb-tip tapping real-time strategy fun on your iPhone. With cartoon graphics and long but limited campaigns, build your nation, crush your enemies and conquer the world in the palm of your hand. Decent zooming functionality for screen size, mid-level gameplay and touch screen control system that suffers sometimes from stubby finger syndrome.

Background

For anyone who enjoys RTS games such as Age of Empires, Civilisation and Sim City, but needs their gaming fix on the move, then Ubisoft and Blue Byte have the answer. Published by Gameloft and downloadable from the App Store, The Settlers is a quirky, cartoon style hybrid of the PC version of The Settlers 4. This adaptation for iPhone retains much of the charm of the original, converted to respond to the touch screen control system.

For the uninitiated, The Settlers is a top-down, map based Real Time Strategy (RTS) game in which players control one of four tribes. Starting out with only a few settlers and surrounded by natural resources, you set about building stockpiles of wood, stone and food so as to begin expanding your village by building houses, farms, woodcutter’s huts, stone mason’s huts et cetera until your tribe can begin constructing larger, more complex structures and institutions like farms, barracks, ship yards, mills and mines.

Zoom in function

Ultimately, creating a strong economy and building a sizeable military presence will stand players in good stead to repel attacks from jealous neighbours greedily eyeing up your natural resources, or conversely, your military might can be exercised upon the hapless tribes who have the misfortune of settling near you.

More cartoon than many other RTS games, The Settlers charm lies in its comic approach to the genre. Unlike some of the more complex RTS titles, The Settlers uses a simplified economic and command structure to allow players to grow their tribe through considered strategic choices but without the requirement to get into the weeds of resource distribution or the complexities of worker selection, though a deeper level of control is available for those who want it. Like a god, or a beloved despot, you guide your tribe from a collection of foraging cavemen to a triumphant empire.

Gameplay

Zoom out function

The game consists of four playable campaigns: Roman, Viking, Mayan and Dark Tribe, and so long as you don’t get too hung up on the historical inaccuracies of a Roman military campaign against South and Central Americans, it’s very enjoyable. The Roman campaign begins as a tutorial and guides players through the basic commands, which is crucial for an iPhone game as Apps don’t come with instructions. Each mission builds upon the last until players fully understand the intricacies of the control system and can confidently take on the game environment. For the forgetful, all menus and submenus have helpful guides and comments to jog the memory and set you on the right path.

The touch screen technology employed by the iPhone is largely successful in The Settlers, utilising a drag and drop function for placing your buildings in just the right place, and tick boxes that you have to tap to confirm that your positioning is what you intended. When selecting individual units a single tap will do the trick, but if you need to select a group of troops, geologists, pioneers or other useful units then a quick twist of two fingers around the units on the screen will see a box appear and select all units of that same type within then area. This is very useful when under attack or when wanting to move large groups of units together.

The controls, whilst the best they can be on an iPhone without the convenience of a mouse or keypad, are a little clunky. Players can often

end up selecting the wrong unit or building due to finger stubbiness and the screen size, although this is often mitigated by a useful zoom function. The odd unintentional screen tap can also ruin a battle by sending troops in the wrong direction and it’s imperative to get to grips with tapping the deselect button as soon as you are finished using any given unit or building.

Visuals

As is to be expected on the impressive iPhone, the graphics aren’t too dissimilar from the PC version, although due to the screen resolution they are not perfect. That said, graphics in RTS games tend to give way to gameplay and this is the case in The Settlers. With a look-down map on a grid system, with variable terrain and a plethora small animations including animal movement and water-flow, the main gameplay units wander around a brightly coloured and simply animated gameplay area that is easy on the eye, even when zoomed right out.

Audio

The sound effects are simple, with noisy clicks to indicate successful actions, background noises like battle and structure building, and the odd high pitched “Yippie” coming from your minions. Players may become annoyed with the repetitiveness of the background noise and the happy-go-luck sound track does become tiring quickly. One of the best features of the iPhone version of the game is that you can click your silent button and rid yourself of the annoying effects without detriment to the gaming experience; this has the added benefit of stopping other commuters looking at you angrily as you tap away to ultimate victory.

Twist and select various units

Closing comments

The longevity of The Settlers is limited by the four playable campaigns, although each campaign level varies in length. There is no free-play option but the later missions for each tribe are quite open anyway, although the earlier missions have quite limited goals as you build up your capacity to manage the game. The Settlers on iPhone is perfect for a quick fix of gaming for fans of RTS, on the move or at home and with 3 save slots and an auto save function your game doesn’t need to end when your phone rings. The full version of The Settlers costs £2.99 from the iTunes App Store.

Tip on N4G