Initially released at the RISC OS North show last month, the latest title from AMCOG Games has now been made more widely available. Silver River Kingdom can now be purchased via !Store, priced at £14.99.
Anyone who purchased the game at the show can – and should, to ensure they have the most up to date version – download the game free of charge from !Store, by using the download code found in the packaging; just input the code in the “Special instructions, promo code, etc.” field in the application.
With inspiration drawn from an old BBC Micro text-based game called Yellow River Kingdom, the new title is an arcade-RPG (role playing game) which mixes the overall text-based aspects of the older 8-bit game, and throws some arcade action into the mix.
You are pitted as the ruler of a small kingdom that sits alongside the Silver River of the title, with an economy that is dependant upon rice. The inhabitants plant and harvest rice, and as part of that must take the necessary steps to defend against bandits, and protect the kingdom and crops from flooding.
At the start of each year, as ruler you must decide the number of people to assign to the key tasks – how many will work in the fields, maintain the ditch that takes excess water from the river, harvest the rice… and how many will defend the village from the baskets. You also need to decide at the start of each year how many rice baskets should be planted.
For the main part, you will be making these decisions from your seat of high office, but tradition in Silver River Kingdom allows you to get your hands dirty one day of each year, and you can choose to participate in any of the tasks; fight off bandits, help dig the ditch, and so on.
Your overall goal is to keep the village alive and well for the full twenty four years that you are permitted to hold your position, after which you can retire happy in the knowledge that your rule has been a successful one – but will you be able to keep things running well for that long?
If you want to see what the game looks like when being played, there is a video on the AMCOG YouTube channel:
The game features:
- 24 virtual years of play.
- Three original, high quality music tracks.
- Sound effects provided by RDSP (also from AMCOg).
- HD graphics
- Joystick support for RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi (via the Retropie controller).
- User definable keys.
- Save/Load facilities, so you can spread your gameplay over more time.
As usual with AMCOG’s games, the full source code is included with the game so if you’re a budding game developer, you can see how things are done.
Silver River Kingdom is compatible with RISC OS 4.02 on VirtualAcorn emulators, and RISC OS 5 on most modern hardware that runs it – though if you’re using a Raspberry Pi, a Pi 2 is the recommended minimum.
