Caesar
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| Caesar

Ah, the Roman times. A period in history where, without phones, television or the internet, people had to resort telling stories about great warriors and ancient myths to pass the time.

Here's a modern day myth for you: mobile phone games are small, cheap, shortlived and throwaway.

Caesar would beg to differ.

Playing as one of the Roman Emperor's advisors, you're tasked with helping build the empire by managing the growth and construction of cities across Europe. Sounds simple – and in many respects it is – but it offers a compelling level of challenge.

Like most simulation / god games, the objectives in Caesar are very much a balancing act in order to help you reach your goal.

So, you're asked to build large populaces. You build lots of houses, but the people need water to drink and goods to sell or buy, so you need to add markets and farms. But stock can overflow or run out, so you best set up some export / import deals with neighbouring cities – beware, folk might need bribing, and deals expire.

Meanwhile, the people back home need keeping happy. They want schools to teach their kids in, roads to walk around on and gardens to visit.

Oh, wait, one of the neighbouring countries is mounting troops for a battle against your city – best build barracks and train warriors. However that needs cash, so let's build another farm to export wheat from, and some more markets. Thankfully, you've earned enough for a kick-ass army, so the war was brief.

The success, however, has turned your town into a city, and now more people are moving in! Time to build more houses...

And so on, you'd think. But Caesar takes things a step further, escalating into global and godly events. You need to build temples that the population can pray in to keep the gods happy (and prevent any nasty smiting), and you must send spies to unfriendly countries to make sure you're ready for their attacks. Neglect any area, and disaster, war or poverty will hamper your progress.

Brilliantly, this set-up isn't unforgiving. With a few single-thumb clicks your city recover as quickly as it can fall into depravity and it's the very fact that the game is so adaptable and accessible that makes it a pretty compelling mobile game.

You rule your empire with an iron fist – and control it with a thumb of steel. Building houses and navigating the map is all done via simple one-click controls on your phone's directional buttons or keypad. Simple menus grant access to the world map, the shop and stats on how happy your residents are.

It's quick and simple – you're never more than a click away from what you want.

In the mission-based mode, you have ten different challenges to face (usually building a city of increasing population), and the action ramps up quickly, so it never feels like you're plodding along. There's a free play mode, as well, which enables you keep building and maintaining your empire for as long as you can manage.

Our only real gripe is that the mission mode doesn't go on long enough. It's great that the free play option exists to compensate, but a few more slightly tougher objectives might not have gone amiss.

Graphics and sound wise Caesar does a good job, although the truth is the tones and textures are more functional than fascinating; the real meat of the game is in the playing, and there's more than enough to be getting on with.

And Caesar's excellent pacing does encourage you to keep playing. You might plan to spend just 20 minutes on the game but you'll actually lose an hour or two, so that cliche about missing your stop on the way to work truly does apply here. You've been warned!

All of which proves Caesar is less the substance of myth, and more the stuff of mobile legend.

Caesar

A first-rate (if a little easy and short-lived) mobile game worthy of your time and money
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