InnoGames Launches Online City-Building MMO Elvenar

Forge of Empires company InnoGames has announced the U.S. launch of Elvenar, its strategy city-building MMO. First announced last fall, Elvenar allows players to back either the humans or elves, with this decision impacting not only the visual look of the game, but also the technologies and units at a player’s disposal.

In Elvenar, humans are described as experienced city builders, and are ambitious and determined, while elves are magical beings living in close harmony with nature. Once the choice has been made, players will build their society by balancing the use of key resources, including coins and supplies. Players are led through the game via a quest system, but users do have some choice in the way they advance.

Players collect coins from their citizen’s homes, while supplies must be manually created inside workshops. These buildings can be upgraded to increase their productivity, but upgrades reduce the kingdom’s culture. The more culture a society contains, the more coins and supplies produced over time, so players are encouraged to purchase additional cultural decorations as the need arises.

Early on, players can begin researching new technologies for their kingdom using Knowledge Points, a separate currency. These Knowledge Points are earned for free over time, or can be earned by interacting with the NPC characters inhabiting the land around a player’s kingdom. These interactions can go one of two ways. Players can spend resources on peaceful negotiations, or send their units into combat.

During battle, units are positioned on a hexagonal grid, and players take turns moving across the grid, clicking on enemy units to attack. If players want to attack, but aren’t interested in actually participating in the battle, they can trigger an auto fight instead, taking them straight to the results screen.

Once players have collected enough Knowledge Points, they can spend them on the game’s research tree. Gamers can focus on military power, researching a barracks, armory and increased squad sizes (as examples), or focus on their town’s economy, unlocking the ability to produce additional resources, including planks or marble.

For social features, players can visit other users’ kingdoms and give them free resources, even if they’re backing the other race. In addition, the game’s leaderboard allows users to compare their progress with others, based on each user’s working population and culture.

As a free-to-play title, gamers can spend real money on multiple items within the game, including Knowledge Points and Diamonds, the game’s premium currency. These can be used to speed up building and upgrade timers, among other uses.

Elvenar is available to play for free on the Web, with mobile versions of the game also planned for future release.