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Dark Age Wars

Dark Age Wars is a browser-based 2D strategy game that puts players in-charge of managing a small medieval city and growing it into a strong and mighty kingdom.

Publisher: Pixabit
Playerbase: Low
Type: Browser Strategy Game
Release Date: June 18, 2008
Pros: +Realistic geography. +Plenty of quests. +Strong Music.
Cons: -Generic gameplay. -Pay-to-win elements. -No innovative features.

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Overview

Dark Age Wars Overview

Take on the role of a young lord returning from the crusades and take charge of your very own village. Decide on building placements and guide your city from its humble beginnings as a log village to an impregnable fortress in a harsh medieval environment plagued by rebels. Join alliances and make friends with your neighbors, or loot them for resources and dominate the battlefield. Conquer territories and destroy enemy strongholds to expand your influence and secure your place in the world. Gameplay in Dark Age Wars is very similar to other web strategy games like Imperia Online and Elvenar.

Dark Age Wars Key Features:

  • Interactive World Map – check out your neighbors' profile or launch attacks right from the world map based on real-world Europe.
  • Starter Quests – make starting your city an easier and more rewarding time by completing beginner quests.
  • Customizable City Layout – choose where you want to place your buildings. Watch your city grow and change from a wooden palisade to a stone fortress.
  • Forge Alliances – band together with other players to help you conquer territories and achieve world domination.
  • Medieval Theme – build your castle and be the lord of a vast land.

Dark Age Wars Screenshots

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Dark Age Wars Featured Video

Full Review

Dark Age Wars Review

By Marc Marasigan

Dark Age Wars is a 2D browser-based strategy game developed and published by Pixabit. The game was officially released on June 18, 2008 and can be played through the game’s official website. The game is set in medieval Europe sometime after the crusades. As a young squire returning from the crusades, players are tasked with ruling and managing their own piece of land and lead it from a ramshackle village to a thriving and impenetrable city.

The game’s graphics are typical of empire-building games with the added bonus of being able to see your structures improve over time. The background music is quite good, in my opinion, and is reminiscent of Gregorian chants, which succeeds in giving the game an eerie medieval feel.

Welcome, Young Squire

After facing grueling and bloody battles in the crusades, players are then given a more challenging task, ruling and managing their own village. Like most games in the genre, players start out with a barren plot of land that they then have to build up into a mighty empire. Players are given a bit of help at the beginning of the game with starter quests. These quests serve as the game's tutorial and teaches players gameplay basics like construction, upgrading, recruiting units, managing resources, and how to interact with the world map. The starting quests reward players by instantly constructing certain buildings as well as providing them with resources, gold, and military units. After completing the starting quests, players are then asked to complete regular quests throughout the game. Although the rewards for completing these quests seem a bit too low, they still serve as great guides for improving and strengthening a village for newbies and veterans alike.

Ruling

Dark Age Wars’ gameplay is similar to other city-building strategy games and is fairly typical of the genre. Players focus on improving their cities and managing resources while also recruiting military units to attack other cities and defend their own. Ensuring that your city has a stable economy is the key to Dark Age Wars and almost every other game in the genre. Military units used for attacking or for defense are next on the list. With the right type of units and the right army size, players can then attack NPC rebels and other players, or defend from attacks sent their way. Attacking rebel cities allows players to conquer them, provided that they have an heir, which they can recruit from their Royal Estates. Attacking other players, on the other hand, only rewards resources.

In Dark Age Wars, achieving victory in combat is all about picking the right type of units. Archers, for example, are good against any other units except mounted ones. Militia, on the other hand, don’t cost much to recruit but are extremely vulnerable to swordsmen. Although simply having a large army gets the job done most of the time, it’s still a good idea to factor in which units work best against other units when creating an army.

Reaching the Top

Unlike similar games, like Tribal Wars, where the goal is to be the last surviving tribe or guild, the ultimate goal in Dark Age Wars is to merely reach the top of the rankings when the game server closes, which, as far as I can tell, is six months from its opening. Player rank is measured by honor points which players gain from performing in-game tasks such as constructing and upgrading buildings, as well as attacking and conquering territories. Getting to the top may seem all but impossible considering that you’ll be competing with hundreds of other players for the top spots. But with hard work and a whole lot of patience, it should be quite doable.

Friends and Allies

Diplomacy plays a big part in surviving most strategy games and Dark Age Wars is no different. Players can join Alliances, the game’s version of guilds, or form their own. Alliances can be formed for free by any player, and can have a maximum of 10 players on their roster. While players can take the aggressive route and dominate the playing field, getting to the top can be a much easier experience, and probably more fun with friends and allies helping you out.

Gold

Dark Age Wars, like most free-to-play games, earns money through microtransactions. Players with a little extra cash on their hands can purchase Gold, the game’s premium currency, to give them an edge over the free-playing community. Gold can be used for a variety of things, including additional building or recruitment slots, discounts on construction costs, and speeding up construction time. Nevertheless, these advantages don’t really break the game in any way. It’s worth mentioning, however, that free-to-play players only get one building slot to work with. Two would have been just fine, but paying for an additional slot just seems a bit too much.

Final Verdict - Fair

Although Dark Age Wars doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, it still has all the elements needed for a solid strategy game. The limited building slots is the only glaring problem that I encountered, but overall, the game is well-made and would certainly appeal to fans and even new players of strategy games. The biggest drawback is the generic gameplay and environments. There are far too many of these browser based strategy games and most of them offer nothing new.

Screenshots

Dark Age Wars Screenshots

System Requirements

Dark Age Wars Requirements

Operating System: XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Equivalent
Video Card: Any Graphics Card (Integrated works well too)
RAM: 512 MB
Hard Disk Space: 100 MB (Cache)

Dark Age Wars is a browser based MMO and will run smoothly on practically any PC. The game was tested and works well on Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Chrome. Any modern web-browser should run the game smoothly.

Additional Info

Dark Age Wars Additional Information

Developer: Pixabit
Release Date: June 18, 2008

Development History / Background:

Dark Age Wars is a free-to-play browser based strategy game developed and published by California based Pixelbit Games / FinalMotive gaming network. FinalMotive / Pixelbit also publish Pirate Quest, VileCity, Mafia Battle, Biocidecity, and Fight West.