Introduction
The purpose of this post is to critically examine Egypt:
Old Kingdom as a mentor game for the Designing Games for Learning course.
This analysis will address the game’s core details, my personal gameplay
experience, its accessibility, and its alignment with James Paul Gee’s Principles
of Learning. Additionally, I will evaluate how the game could be applied in
educational settings and reflect on the process of conducting a structured
critique.
Egypt: Old Kingdom is a historical strategy game that combines resource
management with decision-making and historical storytelling. While primarily
marketed as entertainment, it provides opportunities for developing systems
thinking, understanding resource constraints, and considering how civilizations
adapt to challenges. This critique aims to evaluate the game’s educational
value alongside its limitations.
There were a couple of reasons I selected Egypt: Old
Kingdom. When I was an undergraduate student at Webster University, I took
a history class on Ancient Egypt, where I learned more about the culture and
even made a valiant attempt at deciphering hieroglyphics. Regardless, many
ancient cultures have unique characteristics, from their architecture and art
to their ways of life. Ancient Egypt was no exception, and references to it are
still plentiful today in popular media and scholarship. Choosing this game as
my mentor game allows me to revisit that earlier interest while also exploring
how a strategy game can be used as a learning tool for understanding historical
systems and decision-making.
Mentor Game Details
The mentor game selected for this semester is Egypt: Old
Kingdom, developed by Clarus Victoria, a studio known for creating
historically inspired strategy titles. The target audience for the game
includes history enthusiasts, strategy gamers, and educators who may want to
introduce learners to ancient civilizations through interactive means.
The learning focus of the game lies in understanding how early Egyptian society
developed along the Nile. Players must balance resource management, population
growth, environmental stability, and religious authority to sustain and expand
their kingdom. While the game does not provide a direct curriculum, it embeds
historical knowledge within its mechanics and narrative choices.
Gameplay is primarily turn-based. Players assign workers, collect resources,
develop technologies, and expand territory across a map of the Nile Valley.
Over time, players unlock monuments, cultural institutions, and military
campaigns. The ultimate goal is to grow Egypt from a tribal settlement into a
powerful and stable kingdom while surviving recurring crises such as famines
and invasions.
The narrative is lightly structured, drawing on Egyptian mythology and
semi-historical leaders. The game is designed for single-player, with rules
emphasizing strategic allocation of limited resources. Success depends on
careful planning and adapting to new challenges introduced over time.
Clarus Victoria does not provide formal lesson plans or teacher resources with
the game. However, the game’s Steam page and website highlight its use of
Egyptological research and references to historical periods. Educators could
adapt the mechanics to lesson plans, but currently, no official teaching
resources are provided.
While I did not delve deeply into it during this initial
playthrough, I noticed an area in the Main Menu where players can take quizzes
on Ancient Egypt, separate from the RTS portion of Egypt: Old Kingdom. I
thought this was a clever addition, as it provides an opportunity for players
to test their knowledge of the subject matter outside of the core gameplay.
Although the quizzes are not fully integrated into the main experience, they
demonstrate an intentional effort by the developers to connect the game with
more traditional forms of assessment, which could be useful in an educational context.
Figure 1. Screenshot of Quiz mode in Egypt: Old Kingdom (Sabo, 2025).
Gameplay Experience
I have played Egypt: Old Kingdom for approximately
two hours, spread across multiple sessions. During this time, I completed the
initial tutorial stages and progressed to building key cultural and
agricultural developments along the Nile. Accomplishments included establishing
sustainable food production, constructing monuments, and managing tribal
unification.
One of the primary struggles I faced was balancing expansion with resource
stability. Rapidly increasing the population often led to shortages of food or
stone, which created pressure to rethink my strategy. This challenge made the
game engaging, as mistakes had meaningful consequences.
Figure 2. Screenshot of early gameplay in Egypt: Old Kingdom (Sabo, 2025).
Learning was well embedded in the game’s mechanics. While playing, I gained
insight into the importance of the Nile flood cycles, agricultural surplus, and
the relationship between religion and governance in ancient Egypt. These
concepts were introduced through in-game events and decision-making prompts
rather than external readings.
Reviews and commentary from other players suggest similar experiences: many
praised the game’s historical depth but noted the steep learning curve. A Steam
user echoed my experience, noting:
“As a simulation of the history of Old Kingdom Egypt, you
would be hard-pushed to find a game with as much detail and accuracy while
still being engaging ... the player is put in the position of an Egyptian ruler
themselves.”
Steam Community
This supports my observation about how the game’s
mechanics—like crisis response and resource balancing—help players step into
the role of leadership, reinforcing the identity and system-thinking principles
discussed earlier. My own experience aligns with these impressions, though I
found the tutorial adequate for getting started.
In terms of improvements, the game could include a dedicated “educational mode”
with clearer connections to historical concepts. A guided scenario that aligns
with a classroom lesson would make it more accessible for learners who are
unfamiliar with strategy games.
I
also feel like the Main Menu, or at least the menu for selecting the game’s
difficulties, could be improved. From an artistic perspective, I understand the
intent of presenting the difficulty levels as Egyptian paintings and arranging
them in a thematic lineup. However, this design choice made navigation slightly
confusing at first, since it was not immediately clear which option
corresponded to which difficulty. Granted, these were only my initial
playthroughs, so I do not want to sound overly critical, but it was noticeable.
A similar challenge arose with some in-game menus, such as the technology
research screen. Instead of the more common vertical scrolling format, the menu
requires horizontal scrolling, which briefly disoriented me when trying to make
selections. While these design elements fit the game’s aesthetic, they could
present barriers for players who are accustomed to more standardized interface
layouts
Figure 3. Screenshot of gameplay setting menu for a new game in Egypt: Old Kingdom (Sabo, 2025).
Games for All: Accessibility Assessment
From an accessibility perspective, Egypt: Old Kingdom
presents several barriers. The interface is heavily text-based, with small
fonts that may be difficult for players with visual impairments. There is no
voice narration or screen reader support, which limits accessibility for
players with low vision or reading disabilities. The game also assumes a level
of comfort with complex strategy mechanics, which may exclude younger or novice
players.
Based on the WSSG Accessibility heuristic scale, I would rate the game moderate
to low in accessibility. While it does not completely prevent play for most
users, the lack of options such as scalable text, colorblind modes, or audio
narration creates obstacles. Improvements such as customizable UI, clearer
tutorials, and alternative input methods would help broaden its accessibility.
Outside of the Accessibility Scale, there is also the
broader question of how people with physical disabilities play video games. For
professional reasons, I will not name them here, but I personally know a few
individuals who either lost an arm or whose arm never fully developed. Growing
up, we always found ways to include them in our gameplay sessions, but at the
time I never truly recognized how difficult it could be to play a game that I
often took for granted. My perspective shifted when I was temporarily in a
sling for a week and tried to play Halo 2, which in hindsight was not
the best choice. That experience gave me a new appreciation for the barriers my
friends faced.
This memory resurfaced recently when I met one of our new
hires at the Digital Media Lab in Ellis Library, who also lives with the loss
of an arm. In light of that, I was pleased to find that Egypt: Old Kingdom
can be played entirely with just a mouse, which makes it somewhat more
accessible to players with limited mobility. That said, like many RTS games, it
also includes keyboard shortcuts that, while helpful for speeding up commands,
could present additional barriers for someone with a physical disability.
Overall, while the game shows some promise in terms of basic
accessibility, especially for players who rely on mouse-only controls, there
remain clear opportunities for improvement. These limitations highlight why
accessibility must be considered alongside the core design of a game, not as an
afterthought, which connects directly to broader discussions of how learning
principles are (or are not) embedded in gameplay design
Principles of Learning Critique
Using Gee’s framework, Egypt: Old Kingdom
demonstrates several principles of learning.
Empowering Learners:
- Co-Design Principle: The player actively shapes the development of Egypt
through choices about expansion, technology, and resource allocation. These
decisions impact the course of history, giving the player significant agency.
- Identity Principle: The player adopts the role of pharaoh or tribal leader,
taking on decisions as if they were responsible for the welfare of an entire
civilization. This identity immersion encourages perspective-taking and
role-based learning.
Problem-Based Learning:
- Regime of Competence Principle: Challenges gradually increase in difficulty.
Early stages involve balancing food, while later scenarios demand complex
trade-offs between military, culture, and religion. This progression matches
the player’s growing competence.
- Cycles of Expertise Principle: Repeated encounters with Nile flood cycles and
resource scarcity force players to practice, fail, and adapt strategies. Over
time, these cycles develop expertise in managing complex systems.
Deep Understanding:
- System Thinking Principle: The game highlights how interconnected systems
(environment, economy, religion, and politics) influence one another. For
example, neglecting agriculture during monument building may lead to famine,
demonstrating the trade-offs inherent in societal development.
In summary, Egypt: Old Kingdom demonstrates several
of Gee’s learning principles, particularly in its emphasis on problem-solving,
role identity, and systems thinking. While not designed specifically as an
educational tool, the game’s mechanics naturally encourage these forms of learning,
which makes it an intriguing candidate for classroom integration when paired
with supporting materials
Applications for Learning
Based on my analysis, Egypt: Old Kingdom could be a
valuable supplement in history or social studies classrooms. Teachers could
assign short play sessions, followed by reflective writing prompts such as:
“How did your decision to expand too quickly affect your people?” or “What role
did the Nile floods play in your survival?”
Figure 4. Screenshot of gameplay meeting a new tribe in Egypt: Old Kingdom (Sabo, 2025).
Improvements that could assist educators include built-in lesson plans, guided
scenarios, or historical commentary that connects gameplay events to real-world
history. This would help bridge the gap between entertainment and structured
learning.
Reflection on the Critique Process
Through this critique, I learned how to analyze a game not
only as entertainment but also as a potential educational tool. I recognized
the importance of accessibility, the value of connecting gameplay mechanics to
learning principles, and the need to consider teacher support materials.
If I were to redo this critique, I would dedicate more time to systematically
tracking my in-game decisions and their outcomes to provide stronger evidence.
The most interesting part of the analysis was identifying how Gee’s principles
of learning were naturally present in the game’s mechanics, even though it was
not explicitly designed as a classroom tool.
In the end, analyzing Egypt: Old Kingdom as my mentor
game has been both an academic and a personal journey. My earlier exposure to
Ancient Egyptian culture in college sparked an interest that this game allowed
me to revisit, but this time through the lens of instructional design. By
examining its mechanics, accessibility, and alignment with learning principles,
I was able to see firsthand how a commercial strategy game can contain
meaningful opportunities for learning. More importantly, the process of critique
reminded me that games are not just entertainment; they are complex systems
that can model history, challenge assumptions, and promote problem-solving. As
I continue through this course, I hope to carry forward the lessons I learned
here: to approach games critically, to value accessibility and inclusivity, and
to recognize the potential of games as powerful tools for learning.
References
Clarus Victoria. (2018). Egypt: Old Kingdom [Video game].
Clarus Victoria. https://store.steampowered.com/app/646570/Egypt_Old_Kingdom/
Gee, J. P. (2007). What video games have to teach us about learning and
literacy (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Steam user. (2018, December 28). Review of Egypt: Old
Kingdom [Review of the game Egypt: Old Kingdom]. Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/646500/Egypt_Old_Kingdom/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Sabo, J. (2025). Egypt: Old Kingdom gameplay screenshots [Screenshots].
Personal collection.
