Great Invasions on its way

Now that their website is up, the makers of Great Invasions have announced 15 July as the date that their game hits "your favorite store". They have announced Digital Jesters as the UK publisher. No word on when or if it will make its way over to America.

If you haven't heard of this game, don't be too surprised. It is the sequel to Pax Romana, an overambitious mess of a game. The lead designer, Philippe Thibault was one of the brains behind the original Europa Universalis board game and helped with the transition of that title to the computer arena.

Full disclosure: I was a beta tester for Pax Romana and was assigned to be a beta tester for Great Invasions. I never spent much time on it, and haven't played the game since I downloaded the first build all those months ago.

Great Invasions deals with the collapse of Rome and the rise of barbarian empires through the dark ages. It also has religion as an important characteristic of your state culture, including both Catholicism and Orthodoxy as well as the rise of Islam as a challenger faith to the east.

Will it get a US release? Strength and Honour from Magitech is still looking for a publisher in the UK and US, so indie developers are seemingly having troubles finding a distributor for ancient grand strategy. Strength and Honour has been in Australia and Poland for months, and Magitech is a Canadian developer.

Anyway, if any of you see either of these games floating around your local shops, drop me a line.