Pharaoh citybuilder from 1999 gets 4k remake

The classic city builder Pharaoh from 1999 gets a remake with a 4k resolution. The retro gaming publisher Dotemu is behind the title Pharaoh: A New Era, which should be released for PC sometime next year.

Pharaoh: A New Era already has a Steam page and, according to publisher Dotemu, is being developed with all-new code, in which the small development studio Triskell Interactive also has its share. No source code of the original was available, so everything is built from scratch, based on the knowledge of the original Pharaoh. So it will not be a remaster in which, except for a graphical upgrade, nothing has changed. Dotemu says the remake will feature all-new 2D graphics, along with a revamped user interface and improved mechanics.

Released in 2000, the expansion for the original, Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile, is part of Pharaoh: A New Era. The campaign contains a total of 53 missions and in addition there is also Free Build mode and an editor for creating playing fields and missions. The makers have also released a trailer, which shows in-game footage for a few seconds at the end.

Triskell will probably also reduce the difficulty. The original could be quite complex and tricky. “Some of the things we did in the late 90’s are unthinkable today and we are working hard to honor the Pharaoh experience, but make it so that new players can enjoy the game too,” the studio.

The original Pharaoh, from 1999, was published by Sierra and created by Impressions Games, the studio that also made games similar to Caeser 3 and Zeus at the time. In Pharaoh you had control of an Egyptian city as part of a dynasty with the complex task of planning the development of the city well. Disasters, the role of the Nile and the conflict on land and water also had to be taken into account. Creating and managing all kinds of raw materials and goods and setting up production chains was an important task.

Triskell Interactive asks interested parties to have a little more patience. The game has been in the works for a year, but according to the studio there is still a lot of work to be done. The developer states that while the tools are now more advanced, more than 40 people were working on the original at the time, compared to half a dozen that are now working on Pharaoh: A New Era.