I remembered playing SimCity 3000 where you can play at an earlier date and have certain amenities, like subways, unlocked as time progresses. Urban Empire, published by Kalypso Media and developed by Fragment Production, seems to focus on that, be a mayor and lead your cities through the ages. From the 1820s to modern times.
Weird that you maintain power through the ages? The announcement trailer is set up that you would be in a family line- a confirmed gameplay feature- that maintains mayorship all over the course of time, which reminded me that these publishers own Tropico, the city-builder game with a dictatorship twist, where you can instil corruption and send money to a Swiss bank account for high scores.
Money being laundered to unknown places is something in the Malaysian news currently, right? Topical references aside, here’s the announcement trailer:
From what we see so far, Urban Empire has a focus on more of the governance side of the mayorship rather than just building the cities ala SimCity and Cities Skylines. There’s a tech tree of some sorts, policy making, and social politics. Interesting stuff, as we don’t see these in the mold of a city-builder. It’s more prominently featured in 4X games like Civlization, or the new Master of Orion.
More news to come as Urban Empire is formally introduced at the upcoming Games Developer Conference. Urban Empire is set to release in Autumn 2016, so roughly around September-November range.