Zeus: Master of Olympus is a city building game developed by Impressions Games in 2000. The expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis was released in 2001, following and building upon the core elements of Zeus. I fondly remember this game as a preteen, with distinct memories of playing this while overseas in China. What is a young boy to do in a foreign country aside from play a ton of video games? I recently found these two games on Steam for $5 and immediately downloaded them.
Aphrodite’s red particle glow is a lot smoother with the widescreen mod.
The game has aged well. It is still the city building game I remember. The art style still holds up today, especially with a custom wide screen mod I downloaded and installed in a few minutes after following a youtube video. The wide screen support also updates the monsters and heroes to have less laggy particle effects, making the game operate smoothly 20 years later.
I did not play Caesar or Pharaoh, but I’ve seen and read of their similarities. These games simplify and abstract the elements of city building and house them in a flavored package with campaigns, scenarios, and challenges. I was never a fan of earthquakes or tornadoes randomly running through my Sim City. Despite that, the random but limited damage gods do in Zeus and the controlled challenge of monsters does not bother me. Those challenges ranged from mild nuisances to flavored obstacles. There is a military and combat aspect, as well, with options to create defensive military structures such as walls or towers, or to bribe your way out of invasions if your economy can handle it.
The creator even included blueprint layouts for others to copy.
To my surprise, there is still a community of players playing Zeus to this day, uploading as recent as a week before this post. Players upload their cities to show off their housing blocks, a term used to refer to a closed loop of residential housing with all of its needs built in. Designing and supporting large housing blocks is a good chunk of the fun in Zeus, as other elements like traffic or ordinances that appear in other city building games have been abstracted out of Zeus. Instead, there is a large focus on making the residents of the city happy and fulfilled through the basic needs of food and water, to the advanced needs such as fleece, olive oil, and culture or science. City walkers have different uniforms to represent their roles and residential homes upgrade visually as their needs are met, making a nice feedback loop of: build the necessary buildings for the people, watch city walkers patrol and provide, then watch residential properties grow. Homes upgrade immediately once provided with what they need, and the game lets you know what the residents are looking forward to next. Once homes upgrade, more citizens can flock to your city, ultimately supporting more workers or military.
Just wait until a scientist walks by these unsuspecting residents.
Zeus manages to live on after 20 years by including a custom campaign editor. Even after 20 years, players are still creating and uploading custom adventures, with the most recent user submitted adventure named The Famine, uploaded February 16th, 2022, which is themed around Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. The author posts their creation with pride and the reviews are glowing. It’s beautiful to see this game still live on after 20 years. The core game design elements still stand strong today, despite dozens of other city builders competing on the market. There’s something special Impression Games hit on with their simplified city building, flavor infused, Greek gods game. I sank almost 60 hours into this game over the past month, all because I saw this game was on sale. I didn’t even know the game still had a community of players still engaged with it, developing city blocks and campaigns to this day.
There is a special kind of fun in organizing and developing cities. At times, Zeus even toes the lines of a real-time strategy game with resource development, military, and deadlines. There are usually multiple solutions to any campaign, which provides freedom to map designers, allowing maps to feel different despite sharing tools. The fantasy of worshipping Greek gods and developing beautiful cities is truly experienced in this game. It is a definite recommend from someone who cherishes replay value. It is certainly not an easy game, but it is indeed a rewarding one, both in systemic organization and in fantasy engagement. If you love city building and Greek mythology as much as I do, this game is a must-experience.
Leadership, Design, Writing 