Welcome to Six Ages. It’s a long-
belated follow up to the 1999
cult oddity King of Dragon Pass,
and works the same
way: You manage a
small clan in an iron
age fantasy world, and
try to help them
prosper by making a
series of decisions,
largely involving
praying to gods and
acquiring more and
more livestock. It’s a sort of hybrid
of visual novel and town
management game, with large parts
played out via little choose-your-
own-adventure vignettes, plus town
management-esque decisions on
various menu screens. Try to imagine
Crusader Kings 2 without the
real-time strategy overmap, but with
even more weird events.
That’s probably the best
comparison to modern gamers, not
just because of the vignettes, but also
the emphasis on personality andcharacters. One of Six Ages’ best
features is the Clan Circle: An
advisory council of characters who
chime in on every
decision you make.
They’re all
randomly generated,
but each one has their
own little personality:
This one hates elves,
this one always wants
to stick to tradition—
my priestess, Ailara,
was a very wise old woman whose
comments always amounted to some
variation on “ugh, men”. Most of the
time when you perform an action—
such as sending a trade caravan to a
neighboring clan, exploring the
nearby mountains, or performing a
ritual—one of these characters will be
the public face of it.
You inevitably get really attached
to each character, only to see them
catch a stray arrow in battle,
disappear while exploring, or just
grow old and die.GLORY TO GLORANTHA
Let’s talk about that ritual at the
beginning. This is one of the more
unusual aspects of Six Ages—it’s set in
the world of Glorantha, a board game
and RPG setting created by Greg
Stafford over 40 years ago in which
myth and reality are tightly
intertwined. The farmer is both
invoking the legend in a muddy field
and transported to a mystical
otherworld, and a significant part of
the game is learning the secrets to
these myths so that you can re-enact
them correctly. Alternatively you can
go off-book, putting a spin on the tale
and creating a new interpretation.
A quick word on ports, Six Ages
was originally released on iOS, and
the PC version is basic but functional.
No, there aren’t a lot of graphics
options, but then the game consists
entirely of still screens, so it hardly
needs them. What’s important is that,
unlike the 2015 Steam re-release of
Dragon Pass, it feels like it has been
designed to be used with a mouse
instead of a touch screen. During
play, I only ever encounter one major
bug, where my trade caravans seem
to visit with a different clan than I
intend, which is annoying.
In an alternate universe where
King of Dragon Pass spawned a genre
(clan management sim? Passlike?
Turn-based cow raider?), Six Ages
would probably be considered an
unoriginal and derivative follow up. It
does play in almost exactly the same
way, just with new fiction and a thick
layer of polish (the tooltips in
particular are a godsend considering
how obtuse the original game could
be). I hope to one day live in that
world, but in the current one there is
no modern experience quite like Six
Ages, and I’m just glad to be back in
Glorantha again.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
Visual novel/town
management sim
EXPECT TO PAY
$20
DEVELOPER
A Sharp
PUBLISHER
Kitfox Games
REVIEWED ON
Intel i5, 16gb RAM,
Nvidia GTX 1660
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
blog.sixages.com88
This charming sequel
doesn’t need flashy
new innovations to
craft a seriously
engrossing adventure.VERDICTTry to imagine
CK2 without
the overmap,
but with more
weird eventsT
he council of clan elders look at one another gravely. This
year’s harvest has been poor, and our people need food to
make it through the winter. The warmaster, a young fire
mage called Yakatan, pipes up, “Perhaps we could raid a
nearby clan, and steal their cows?” But Shaman Kimka has an
alternative plan: “How about if we get one of our farmers to put on a mask
and prance around pretending to be the cow goddess, until they get
transported to a mystical otherworld, commune with the gods, and ask
them to beam down 100 cows directly into our fields?” Both suggestions
are very sensible, but I think we’re going to go with the mask thing.SECOND PASS
SIX AGES: RIDE LIKE THE WIND updates a cult
classic for the modern world. By Tom Hatfield
WHO’S WHO A colorful cast of characters
ULANAI
Skills:
Combat,
leadership
Likes: Fighting
Dislikes:
Making peaceYATAK AN
Skills:
Combat,
magic
Likes: Fire
Dislikes:
ChariotsTARGARUNG
Skills:
Everything
Likes: Horses
Dislikes: Doing
all the workDOREN
Skills:
Diplomacy
Likes: Long
tedious stories
Dislikes:
Those barbaric
OrlanthiAILARA
Skills: Magic
Likes:
Healthcare
Dislikes: MenKOSYALOR
Skills:
Belonging to
the right family
Likes:
Nepotism
Dislikes:
MeritocracyKIMKA
Skills: Talking
to ghosts
Likes: Ghosts
Dislikes: The
livingREVIEW