I decided to give Travians a go today, the new game made by the guys who did Travian. For those that don’t know, Travian is a web-based strategy game. It is essentially an MMO version of Civ. You build your villages, build armies, get resources, and then start fighting other players in hopes of being able to make a world wonder in the end and win the game. With this game, I think the devs were hoping to use their popularity of the other game and give RPG players a little something to do.
Now keep in mind this little review is only from a little bit of play. But from what I’ve gathered so far, this game seems more like Harvest Moon than your typical RPG. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, I think Harvest Moon is a fine game, but I find it difficult to think that many of the Travian players will find this type of game appealing. After all it is going from a fairly hardcore game to a fairly casual game.
The reason for the farming really comes from the fact that they try to give the feel that you are a citizen of one of the tribes within Travian. They use a lot of the same graphics, and for this I think they are fairly successful. You go around gathering resources and then you can go and refine those resources, using normal plots that you see in Travian. I think you can then use those resources to either sell in the marketplace or you can use them to make furniture and weapons. Yes there is fighting in the game, but not much early on.
From reading through the manual, the fighting seems like mostly 1vs1 stuff with your occasional guild vs. guild. And it doesn’t seem overly involving either. Honestly Travian seemed far more strategic than the fighting in this game. This one seems like you pick a direction to move in and other than that it is level vs level and gear vs gear. Not very great of a system here.
The other big thing to do in the game is little mini-games. Thus far the minigames include Chess, Go, Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect 4, Reversi, Dots & Boxes (whatever that is), Battleship, Blackjack, dice duel, and skat. These games look fairly simplistic and aren’t going to blow you out of the water. It seems they are trying to do something similar to Puzzle Pirates, just not as good here.
By doing these, you get status which with that you can buy furniture for your house which seems the end goal. You can then visit houses and rate them and such. This is actually kind of cool but a lot of people aren’t into house building, and at the end it isn’t really much to do.
Right now I just don’t get the total point. It is a fun little game to play from time to time, but it isn’t anywhere near the quality of Travian. Maybe it is just because the game is early and they haven’t implemented a lot of features. Maybe it is just because I haven’t gotten into the meat of the game. Not really sure, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of meat on the product which is a shame because many of the browser-based RPGs are kind of bad and this had promise to really fix that.
4 replies on “Travians”
I think you mean Travian – cos in the game Travians you don’t have armies and the screen does not look like that – maybe dest rename your title to correct on ot
Travian
Well obviously you chose not to actually read the article, but if you don’t read the article, please don’t post about it saying that i should correct the name of it. The article is about Travians, but yes I do mention Travian in the opening paragraph to show the basis of what Travians is all about, because while they are different games… Travians was in fact based off Travian. (Hence the similar names and art styles). As for the picture, it is of Travian too be sure, with a passover text that says “Will Travians be as popular as the original?” Which was my logic behind the picture.
So no…. I will not rename the article about Travians to be Travian, that would be misleading to those may be interested in the article they are actually going to read.
ok so i play the game and one major thing i think your missing is the guilds. to me this is one of the best parts of both travian and travians, its the interaction with the players. not to mention that the combat, which you said was ‘not overly involving’. and i can agree with that to a point, because its definitely not the type of thing you get with a game like say halo. but the thing is its still free to play with no downloads, and so that limits them, so say comparing it to runescape (ok not the best mmo… but..) its quite involving because you can develop a skill of fighting not just as a character but as a player.
one thing i really like about it though is when comparing it to travian, you have lots of choices, like occupation for example. you don’t have to sit around and wait for all of your resources to come in, you can simply go and trade the resource of your occupation for the coins that you can get anything with! dont forget about not getting confined to a certain guild because of your area, the guilds area is your area!!! so it makes it alot less up to chance. plus its a fusion of rpg and rts so its for certain people also (aka not action shooter types)
2 Razakius!
Hello guys.
when i am working on the net suddenly, Travian windows show up. i use to ignore it but today is a different dia. As you see, i am Here!.
I don’t play games. the tetris is only one for me. recently, my sister gave me a nitendo DS and i am into professor Layton and the Curious village because this helps me that my brain receives a mathematic study tour.
I am 38 years old korean age it means playing game is not my leisure but for study. Travians will help me a lot to think globally and systematically i think or i hope or i desire. thank you so much to develope this kind of program(i mean the game), i give a big applause for you guys! can you hear it? Hasta la vista. Sun Mee from seoul, korea.