More and more CIV competitors are springing up. The next candidate is Ara: History Untold. Not much is known about it, but we have dug deeper.
What has Civilization actually done wrong? For years, hardly any other game dared to come close to CIV and now, in a very short time, we’re seeing developer studio after developer studio revolt against the king of historical turn-based strategy.
Is the king just too old by now? Has Civilization allowed itself too many blunders in recent spin-offs? Is the time ripe for a new status quo? Probably a little bit of everything. But whatever the reasons, we as a gaming community can only benefit.
After all, the last two big competitors, Old World and Humankind, were both extremely entertaining 4X strategy games that both copied the Civilization principle in their very own way and developed entirely new ideas. Old World, for example, brought a hint of Crusader Kings into the mix, while Humankind completely rethought battles and cultural development.
Now the question remains: What does Ara: History Untold bring with it? This all-new CIV competitor was first revealed at Microsoft’s big showcase in June 2022 and is scheduled for release as early as 2023. The trailer shown, however, remained surprisingly vague.
Happily, there is considerably more information on the net about this new contender for Civilization’s throne – which we have compiled and analysed for you.
Table of Contents
Who is actually behind Ara?
Ara is developed by the US developer studio Oxide Games, which is based in Maryland. A studio you probably haven’t heard much about. But it’s actually not that surprising that this developer is now trying its hand at a competitor to Civilization.
Oxide Games was founded in 2013 by employees who had previously worked for Electronic Arts and especially Firaxis Games. So these are people who have already worked on Civilization themselves! Now they are apparently trying to realise their whole own vision.
Oxide Games, however, has only published one other strategy game so far. In 2016, this studio released the real-time strategy game Ashes of the Singularity. This sci-fi RTS in the style of Supreme Commander was not really outstandingly good in its time, but at least it was a solid first attempt.
What kind of game will Ara be?
As already mentioned, Ara: History Untold will be a flawless 4X strategy game in which we lead a nation through human history turn by turn. In the process, we pass through different eras and, in addition to territorial expansion, must also ensure that we do not fall behind technologically.
If you rest too much on dominating every battlefield with your superior longbow archers, you will eventually look foolish. At the latest when the arrows simply bounce off the steel plates of modern tanks. But progress also changes how cities look and the entire infrastructure of an empire. At least that’s what we assume, because Ara’s first screenshots show much of what we would expect in Civilization. A look at the HUD is the most revealing.
Technologies
Top right we see very clearly that, as is usual in the genre, we select different technologies which are then researched in a certain number of turns. Here’s the first good news: in Ara, brewing beer is apparently a separate technology. And it seems that the person here is playing with Germany right now, at least the coat of arms at the bottom right reminds us of the federal eagle. Beer and Germany – well, that fits.
Epochs
The game is also divided into different eras as usual, which we can see at the bottom right next to the button for the next move. It is not yet clear exactly how many we will go through, but there are definitely the Ancient World, the Iron Age and the Atomic Age. Which seems a bit strange, since the Iron Age strictly speaking includes the Ancient World.
Resources
In the left bar at the top of the screen, a number of resources can be seen. Interestingly, the icons for each resource change depending on the age and new ones are added. There certainly seems to be a total population, as well as research points, food, money, wood and stone. Electricity will be added later. The different symbols could also be an indication that the icons are still being worked on, and the fact that the concrete numerical values here don’t make sense (130,000 people in the Iron Age, 473 in the Atomic Age) is most likely also due to the game version.
What makes Ara special?
At the moment it is still very difficult to crystallise what exactly sets Ara apart from other historical turn-based strategy games. At first glance, everything here seems very familiar. At least we know that Ara has its own approach when it comes to the question of the leaders of a nation.
Here, Ara places itself between Civilization and Humankind. In any case, there are fixed leaders who are always represented by great personalities. For example, Nerfertiti rules over Egypt, Sappho over Greece and George Washington over the USA. At the same time, Ara also allows us to create our very own leader.
Ara never tires of emphasising that we should explore a dynamic and living world. At the moment, this still sounds very much like an advertising phrase, or at least there is no concrete clue as to what is meant by it. In any case, it is certain that the earth and its biomes will be randomly generated every time the game starts, but that is standard for the genre.
More interesting is the statement that we influence the stories of each of our subjects with our decisions and that all people have their own unique story. Clearly Ara seems to place much greater value on the lives of the people in our country. This is also evident in the game’s graphics, where the streets seem much more alive as they are populated with little men and women.
Last but not least, Ara is not supposed to provide a clear path to victory. Apparently, the strategy game does without different victory conditions, as they exist in Civilization. Instead, we are supposed to achieve victory in a completely different way in each round. However, there is no really concrete information on this yet.
Humankind already tried to break up the game with victory conditions – but this is also one of the biggest weaknesses of the CIV competitor. Maybe Ara will actually find a more innovative method!
What do you think of Ara so far? Do you like what you see or are you rather sceptical? Write us your opinion in the comments!
Editor’s verdict
I don’t really know what to think of Ara: History Untold yet. Well, that may be because there really isn’t much information yet. How am I supposed to form a proper opinion? On the other hand, it’s sometimes quite telling when a game keeps so much to itself when it’s announced with perhaps the most innovative features. Actually, you want to make a good impression and stand out from the crowd and not formulate the biggest selling point so vaguely.
That’s why I’m currently more sceptical than excited. Probably also because a CIV competitor is really nothing out of the ordinary anymore. Humankind and Old World both dared to attack and did very well. But they have also shown that it is not easy to actually replace CIV. For that, bigger guns have to be brought in. Will Ara be able to do that? I still doubt it. But nevertheless, as an old history nerd and friend of turn-based strategy, I’m really looking forward to checking out this new foray into CIV’s territory.
