Genesia
| Developer: T. Zighem | Graphics: |
 | |
| Publisher: Microïds | Sound: |
 | |
| Year: 1993 | Difficulty: |
 | |
| Genre: Strategy | Lastability: |
| |
| Number of players: 1 to 3, alternating | Rating: |
7/10 | |
Genesia is your classic RPG setting: trees, yokels, and seven sacred jewels, the pillars of natural balance… Been here before?
The game is known as Ultimate Domain in the United States. Its isometric 3D presentation, in a tiny stylised frame bordered by two rows of icons, is clearly inspired by Populous, but its turn-based mechanics lean more towards Civilization.
You play as the leader of a band of settlers seeking prosperity. You start with three or four individuals, whose roles you assign: farmer, woodcutter, carpenter, architect, blacksmith… You instruct them to build structures, gather resources, grow your population, and expand your territory. Later, you’ll raise an army to conquer the two rival lands—before they do the same to you.
The game’s unique twist lies in the ability to change your settlers’ professions each turn (one turn equals a season) to adapt to weather conditions and address your most urgent needs. Balance is everything: dig wells to secure water, but not too many, lest you deplete the groundwater; chop wood, but sparingly, to avoid ecological disasters. Neglect the farmers, and your food supply dwindles. Overlook the architects, and you’ll lack vacant housing, essential for population growth. In short, weaving won’t produce spurs!
[You got it. Another bawdy spoonerism lost to translation. – Ed.]
Meanwhile, a research module, reminiscent of Mega lo Mania, allows you to develop new technologies, advancing human progress… Yes, that’s right—by inventing weapons and stabbing your neighbours in the gut.
Your settlers are delicate souls endowed with a “morale” gauge that affects their productivity and depends on their living conditions (having enough food and water, for instance). Their morale can be miraculously boosted by generous donations to local temples (spot the subliminal message about religion’s role in society).
There are two ways to win: conquer all the territories of the other two players (after defeating their armies) or recover the seven divine jewels mentioned earlier. It’s rare and refreshing for a war strategy game to offer a non-violent approach. That said, it’s highly likely one of your rivals will acquire a jewel, forcing you to retrieve it by less-than-peaceful means. Still, the game allows for temporary alliances and even trade with other factions.
The most enjoyable part is the conquest, which gives the game a wargame feel akin to Warlords, though I’m not entirely convinced the visual design is ideal. The environment feels cramped and stifling due to the terrain and the density of objects (trees, rocks, houses). Moving troops (or carts) using action points can be downright tedious. On the other hand, compare it to Mega lo Mania: the latter offers ample space and visibility but does absolutely nothing with it.
It’s not something I often say about an Amiga game, but the interface struck me as intuitive and clear. I particularly appreciated the tooltip in the bottom left corner that describes whatever is under the cursor, even displaying its coordinates. There are charming animations (likely inspired by Powermonger), like the autumn leaves swirling across the game windows or the waves gently lapping the shore.
However, the game feels much more static than the titles it draws from. The pace is painfully slow. Early in the game, you’ll often have to skip turns due to a lack of resources. Yet those initial steps are crucial in the race to develop alongside your neighbours. If too many settlers fall ill or lightning sets your forests ablaze in the first few seasons, catching up will be an uphill battle.
A minor gripe to close: the turn-based gameplay isn’t quite what it claims to be. You get around three minutes to complete your turn. This happens to be one of my personal pet peeves—I see time limits in strategy or puzzle games as an admission of weakness, a sign that the game couldn’t rely solely on the complexity of its rules. Here, the main “challenge” boils down to repetitive tasks, like advancing research by tediously clicking through a tech tree branch by branch, or managing the sale and distribution of resources between plots via cart trips back and forth from the shop to the warehouses. This logistical grind scales up with the number of regions under your control, and let’s just say it quickly becomes a tiresome hustle—quite fitting for a peddler’s lot, don’t you think?
[Attempting to translate French puns again. This is agonizing… – Ed.]
I’ve heard that load times are unbearable if you’re playing from floppy disks. I ran it from a hard drive (virtual, under emulation) and had no complaints in that department. However, switching maps requires restarting the game twice, inserting the “configuration disk” in between. That’s … convoluted, to put it mildly. Honestly, I’d recommend sticking with the PC-DOS version anyway—it’s visually improved and freely available.
Toward the end of my playthrough, I encountered a bug that stopped me from recruiting new soldiers for several turns. In every barracks, the button for managing the army inexplicably redirected to the tax rate menu. It eventually resolved itself after I made a donation to the temple. Divine intervention, perhaps?
The game’s creator, Thomas Zighem, once said in an interview that he didn’t create a “product”. It might sound like a cliché, but I find it refreshingly subversive. Compare that to the concept of the “beautiful product” praised by the programmer of Mr. Nutz in another interview.
The PC-DOS version of Genesia was released in 1994. An iPad version followed in 2011, and a board game adaptation appeared in 2020. A true modernised remake was announced in 2013, titled Genesia Héritage, later renamed Genesia Legacy: Ultimate Domain. It’s been in early access (read: unfinished) since 2017, with its last update in 2018. And yet, to my dismay, it’s still being sold in 2024 for €16.79. I distinctly recall this same developer denouncing microtransactions in modern games. Do you see the irony?
Meanwhile, a free, open-source, fully completed pseudo-remake of Populous 3, exists. I’ll be dedicating a page to it soon!
|
