CGE plays Efficient Upgrade and releases Through the Ages on Steam

iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux •

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after doing this at 164, Owen’s old site, and here at Stately Play, it’s that big news will always drop when I’m unable to reach a keyboard. I’ve been behind the wheel of a 13 year-old minivan the last few days, so getting new news up on the site has been…challenging. Luckily, Kelsey filled in and wrote something I can only describe as “don’t miss”. Still, I failed Czech Games and my favorite title of 2017 by missing the launch of Through the Ages on Steam. So, here goes: If you haven’t heard, Through the Ages is now on Steam!

It’s couldn’t have been easy to improve what is already the best digital board game port ever crafted, yet CGE managed to make the Steam version even shinier than its mobile predecessor. It’s still the same great game, but the Steam version has a few perks you won’t find on mobile:

• When building by dragging you can now see prices of different buildings or reason(s) why it is not possible to build.
• Custom game basic Statistics (online game stats will come in the future update)
• New level of AI – Training AI
• New language available – Chinese
• New language available – Spanish
• Nicer background graphics

Rumor has it that these additions will, eventually, make their way to our tablets and phones, but there are some Steam-only additions that will remain Steam-only:

• Tooltips when you hover mouse over a card or an object
• hot-keys
• play/take cards by double-click
• we will add hotseat as an update later (it needs to be redesigned and we did not want to delay release.)

Those may not seem like huge improvements, but play a few times on Steam and it’s obvious that CGE took the Steam version seriously and didn’t just crank out a cheesy mobile port with terrible non-touchscreen UI. As we’d expect from CGE, everything feels perfect regardless of which platform you choose.

The Steam version is completely cross-platform with all other platforms, and you can start a game on your phone against your arch-enemy (we all have one) and then finish it up on your laptop later that day. If that’s not cool enough, they’ve also launched it with a sale price of $10, making it the same price as the iOS/Android version. The sale will last for a week and then the price will jump up to $16.

• Through the Ages for iOS Universal, $10
• Through the Ages for Android, $10
• Through the Ages for PC/Mac/Linux via Steam, $10 (on sale)

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