Empires of Dawn

Empires of Dawn is a real-time strategy game built for your hands. Four villagers, a town centre and a valley full of promise — that is everything you start with. Send your people into the oak groves for timber, into the berry thickets and wheat fields for food, and down into the gold veins and stone quarries that the raiders also want. Every load they carry home is a house, a barracks, or a knight.

Drag to sweep the camera across rolling meadows and swaying grass, pinch to drop in close enough to watch a carpenter drive pegs into a rising barracks, twist to bring the enemy flank into view. Tap a villager and tap a tree — that is the whole language. Hold and drag to gather an army into your fist, then send it out with a single touch.

Advance through the Dark, Feudal and Castle ages to unlock archers, forges and armoured knights, and thicken your walls before the war horn sounds. The raider horde grows all game long: first a pair of axemen, later coherent warbands that mass at the ridge and come for your buildings. You will get a warning. What you do with it is the game.

Win by tearing down the raider town centre. Lose yours, and the age ends in the dark.