Illyriad

Did You Know?

• Illyriad was showcased in the Mozilla Labs 2010 Game On Gallery and was an IGF 2012 Main Competition Entrant.
• The game can be played in any web browser supporting HTML standards, including mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.
• Research, troop builds, and advanced resource production cannot be sped up through the use of in-game currency.

Development

Development of Illyriad began in 2009, making it the first game from Illyriad Games Ltd. The initial team consisted of three developers and three artists, though only two were full-time, with others working other jobs. The core team's background was in web and enterprise software, not games, and initial content was provided by volunteers. Critical development software included Microsoft ASP.NET MVC and jQuery, with Microsoft SQL Server used for persistent game data. After launch, the world changed from randomly generated to fractally generated with topographical features such as mountain ranges, lakes, forests, hills, oceans, islands, and rivers, followed by biomes including desert, jungle, marshes, and the polar north, as well as regions and NPC Factions. The development team later consisted of remote workers in different countries and outsourced suppliers; Quantic Labs was brought on for graphics used to relaunch the user interface. On 09 Aug 2011 the World Map changed from HTML DOM to HTML5 Canvas, increasing zoom levels to 25 and the grid to 51x51 tiles, adding drag-and-drop and mouse wheel zoom, movement updates for units, and Fog of War for diplomats. On 19 Aug 2011 OpenID authentication was introduced. Artists were hired to improve character portraits, released in August 2011. Illyriad Games also released an early detailed working example of a first-person town experience using WebGL and HTML audio.

Reception

Illyriad was one of three games chosen by Massively for a desert island trip, described as a fantastic browser-based city-builder with realistic trade, an amazing community, and variable-speed gameplay. It was also selected for Massively's top eleven of fifty games for the mobile lifestyle, noted for its epic RTS feel with killer lore and an awesome community. The game was voted in the top 100 indie games and one of the top 2 MMOs of 2011 in IndieDB's Indie of the Year Awards, and was included in GameSpy's 101 Free PC Games of 2012.