HISTORY Egypt: Engineering an Empire marches onto iPad

Strategy specialist Slitherine Software has released games on the Apple App Store before.

HISTORY Egypt: Engineering an Empire came out for iPhone almost 12 months ago, and scored an impressive Silver Pocket Gamer award when Damien reviewed it.

"With its expansive empire-building gameplay, intuitive combat and enjoyable multiplayer mode, History Egypt: Engineering an Empire packs in more content than most other iPhone titles," he reckoned.

But now the game is Slitherine's debut iPad release (together with publisher Matrix), with the hope that the large screen will make it easier for players to rise to the top of the Egyptian power pyramid.

The bulk of the game consists of the single player Campaign mode, which has you building up your empire, using attributes such as economic growth, political power, diplomacy, and of course, the development of your armies and invasion of your neighbours.

There are nine campaigns in total, and a two player hotseat multiplayer mode.

These activities are split across three map views. The campaign map shows the entire game world, while the city map drills down into the structure and role of one of your cities in economic terms. The battle map is how you handle attacking enemy cities in a turn-based fashion.

As you'd expect in such games, each of playable tribes has unique units - there are a total of 25 units per army - and buildings - 50 per city.