Just less than six months back, one of the google results showed up Age of Empires in an unrelated search, and all hell broke loose. Yet again. Adrenaline filled memories of yesteryear's came crashing like a tsunami toppling all semblance of civility in a life already running amok with a crazy startup schedule. Gaming was my biggest weakness, and continues to be. I've blogged earlier about my fling with some of the games, consoles and the many nights from my life that I've paid them back with. I've come to realize that nothing really changes with a decade or so passing by. I still sit up wide-eyed in rapt attention like a school kid, when anyone mentions about a new game.
Age of Empires (AoE) has a special place as one of my oldest and long-surviving 'flames'. It was a pleasant surprise to see a new game launched in this very same series on Windows app by Microsoft Studios after about a decade. This is the AoE - Castle Siege game that was launched in 2014, and in a big change from rest of the series, was conceived as a Tower Defense game. Thankfully, unlike other popular tower defense games like Field Runner, Kingdom Rush or Plants and Zombies, this borrows some elements of the empire-building themes from AoE.
As with most MMOG only (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) or 'multi-player games' in short, the game starts off serving several delightful aspects of game play, with absolutely no demands for long or continuous periods of your time. However, as you level-up and keep building your resources, the reel world starts to take over your real world, demanding steady engagement and mercilessly large chunks of time. It was almost as if the castle and armies were part of your family and you couldn't sleep without feeding them, nor continue with your work lest you leave them at risk of enemy raids.
I lived with this world for almost 2 months, feeding the units & upgrading structures late into every night. I then worked through the day to collect more resources, conducting raids and plundering enemies every couple of hours, between my office meetings. While the units recuperated between raids, I frantically kept arranging and re-arranging tower defenses to fight back potential enemy attacks, all the while attending to kids at home! Truth be told, I more than enjoyed my time with the game & the adrenaline rush during every single login (every few hours) can only be experienced. On the verge of upgrading to 7 of the total 10 levels, and after I had unlocked a majority of game objectives, one fine day I deleted my account & left this virtual world. Here is a snapshot of my castle and its defenses, for posterity.. until the next time!
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