Anno 1602: Creation of a New World

Release Date - April, 1998 (EU)

Developer - Max Design

Publisher - Sunflowers Interactive

Platform - PC

Every time you start a new game in Anno 1602 you’re met with a combination of anxiety and excitement. You are but one of a cluster of ships, surrounded by miles of water and a small handful of unexplored islands nearby. One or more of these will become your new home, and those other ships will become either valued trade partners or bitter enemies.

Anno 1602 is the first game in what has become a storied franchise spanning more than two decades. It’s easy to see why the game garnered such a dedicated fanbase, as Anno 1602 really captures the excitement of exploration and conquering new lands. Accompanied by a charming soundtrack of period-appropriate music (including some well known songs such as ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Greensleeves’, nevermind the fact they were both seemingly written after 1602 in real life) and some beautiful pixel art, the game really draws you in early, and then holds you with the addicting gameplay of seeing your settlement grow into a major power of the New World.

Humble beginnings, there are many islands you can choose to settle on, but don’t wait too long to decide!

As the old saying goes about land; “God’s not making any more of it”. The early game quickly becomes a balancing act of deciding which island to make your new home while also being careful to settle down before all the best lands are occupied by others! This is made more exciting by the fact that you really need to get close to an island first before you know exactly what resources it contains. You only have limited supplies on board your ship, so choosing an island that has ample necessities like timber, fertile soil and food is a crucial decision. An inspection will also reveal if the island is suitable to grow the expensive luxuries like sugar, tobacco or cocoa!

What makes Anno 1602 so satisfying is seeing your town develop. It happens organically as you build infrastructure. Pioneers will be content with just surviving the harsh new lands, but eventually as you build schools, churches and taverns, their quality of life will improve. This is reflected in both the naming of your population, and how many are Pioneers, Settlers, Citizens or higher. You’ll see their homes improve from basic domiciles that provide shelter from the elements through to elaborate and ornate homes. 

This is where the challenge lies, to make your population grow, attract new settlers and keep the existing ones happy and prosperous (and in turn, producing goods and income for you!), you must meet their ever growing demands. Sure, a Pioneer might be happy with a roof over his head and food on his table, but eventually they’ll want a school for their children. As time goes on, they’ll want a tavern and a church. So on and so forth until you really need to start looking at universities and getting a steady supply of jewellery, tobacco and other ‘finer things’.

Natural disasters such as fires, or even plagues can cause major problems for your colony. These can be acts of God, but can also be caused (or made worse) by neglect or poor planning. Did you remember to build a fire brigade? And give them road access? Do you have enough doctors and hospitals to treat the sick?

Those grim reapers represent the plague. Better get onto that…

Each island can only provide so much of any resource, and you’ll find yourself eventually needing goods from other islands. If you’ve got the resources required, you can go and settle another island, but a lot of the time you’ll find that island is already occupied by a fellow explorer. Trading with other islands, natives and even Old World ships becomes necessary, and also an opportunity to sell luxury goods for big profits.

As with most good city-builder games, you’ll find that different aspects of your fledgling society will be competing for resources. Timber will be needed to build new production buildings, but it’s also required by your settlers to improve and maintain their homes. Your production chains will also get progressively longer; build an iron mine to get ore, then build a refinery to make iron, which in turn can be made into either weapons or tools. It can get dicey when you find that you’re running low and can’t keep up production, but solving a problem through finding new untapped resources, or via trade (or violence, of course) gives you a high that’s worth the trouble.
It’s all delightfully addictive, and it’s easy to lose hours diving into the game and building newer settlements, each one more advanced than the last attempt.

There’s quite a lot of content in the scenarios to sink your teeth into.

This is generally the gameplay that will await, regardless if you choose to embark on the game’s campaign mode or just endlessly run through randomly generated sandbox games. The campaigns do a nice job of introducing players to the mechanics, with bite-sized missions that revolve around reaching a certain population limit, getting your settlers to a certain status, and eventually even dealing with rivals.

The campaigns serve more than just a tutorial, with some tricky challenges and out-of-the-box missions that have to be undertaken. They get progressively harder and are interspersed with some nice (although short) CGI cut-scenes and some back-story to the mission. Overall there’s hours of content here if you want more of a guided experience through the game.

How it feels to get your settlement running just right…

Anno 1602 was the best selling computer game in Germany in 1998, proving a hit with both management-sim die-hards and new players entering the genre. By 2003 it had sold 1.7 million copies in German-speaking countries, and by 2004 had reached international sales of 2.7 million copies. The success meant that developer Max Design and publisher Sunflowers was able to continue the series with many more incarnations. Each game in the Anno series offers a different experience, but there is something special about the very first. It’s a truly charming experience and one that will have you coming back to explore new worlds again and again.

Doesn’t matter if you’re completely new to city-builders; this is a game that has an ability to draw you in like few others.