I’ve become totally addicted to this game. It’s made by Tilted Mill, which is the wonderful studio responsible for Pharaoh, Caesar, Sim City Societies, and many other delightful city building games. Nile Online is very fascinating conceptually. It is a broswer-based casual MMOG. Contrary to many browser-based MMOGs, it is not implemented using Java or Flash, but rather PHP delivering dynamic HTML with Ajax. It is casual because player actions are implemented over time. Creating a building in the beginning may take 15 minutes, but later on, upgrading it to a higher level may take 6 hours.

The primary mechanic of the game is trade. Players can trade with each other, but much of the trading is unchecked, so it relies on trust and communication (via an in-game email/scroll system). One could probably say that it is about economies, but the way that the economy is implemented in game, it relies on issues of time and distance that make it unlike many contemporary economic games which are much more instantaneous. It’s a lot of fun.

Meanwhile: When did Open Office 3 come out? Sun really needs to figure out how to cultivate popular enthusiasm and support! Maybe I’ll give some sort of review later after I get it installed. It’s a great project, but needs more publicity for it to get recognized. I don’t want them to advertise. I hate advertisements passionately. But they could see about getting their product reviewed on blogs or on tech news sites.