

Using the contents of your sloshing hold, you erect a coastal warehouse, along with some fishermen's cottages and woodsmen's huts. You guide the ship around the map until you find an island that looks suitable for settlement. First they supply a cute little galleon and a big randomly-generated map veiled in fog. Here's how Related Designs keeps you superglued to your seat.

This is dangerously absorbing entertainment - DVT in a DVD case. Me, I'd usually condemn this kind of presumptuous nannying, but in Anno 1701's case I think it's actually a sensible precaution. Mums will approve of the way this classy settle-and-trade strategy game watches for signs of chronic addiction then dispenses subtle health warnings via in-game characters. Don't you want to stretch your legs for a bit?" When unlocked, you'll get access to such nefarious agents as arsonists, spies, poisoners, revolutionaries, pickpockets, flatterers and traitors.Īs for DS specific features, the game will be controlled mainly using the touchscreen and stylus, with the top-screen being used for economic updates, as well as communication with the various in-game characters.Ī four-player game mode will also be available using the DS' local wi-fi connectivity.Ĭurrently locked down inside the hold of a leaky ship crossing the Atlantic, we hope Anno 1701 will make landfall sometime in the summer."You've been playing for two hours without a break. There'll be various computer controlled rivals to fight off as well, which brings us to the specialisations available in the Lodge. Pirates also provide a useful source of hard-to-find items.īut you'll need more than Wal-Mart-rivaling cashflow to be a success. To maintain these standards of living, you'll be trading with races including Aztecs, Asians, Indians and the Iroquois. The more rarefied merchants, on the other hand, prefer chocolates and nights at the theatre. For example, citizens are boozers, who also need cigarettes and education. Starting out on an unnamed island, you'll colonise it, attracting folks such as pioneers, settlers, citizens, merchants and aristocrats in the process.Įach of these has different needs that must be fulfilled in order for your outpost to flourish. The whole of Manhattan Island for a bag of beans and a couple of shiny buttons? Surely someone was robbed.īut it's this kind of commercial cunning that will be required to make your way through the DS version of Anno 1701.īased on the PC series, which so far has consisted for Annos 1503, 16 (wonder what's next?), the strategy games place you in the situation of turning a desolate colony into a roaring financial success. And when you'd actually got there you had to barter with the natives. Back before eBay made selling the things you find down the back of the sofa one of the UK's main leisure activities, trading goods involved perilous sea crossings to exotic lands.
