Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

The Fertile Crescent, a (currently) entirely free to play real-time strategy that's a little like a retro Age of Empires just had a big update focusing on the overall quality. A good one if you have some free time and enjoy RTS, as The Fertile Crescent is extremely promising and you can play against both the AI and others online.

For starters, it's had a bit of an audio overhaul as they've switched to FMOD. Now they have access to better options to pull you in "like pitch and volume, as well as some additional in-engine audio effects" as well as "spatialisation and 3D sounds" to give it a better atmosphere but it's an early start on it. Their music system is also now a bit more random and they will eventually work it in to be more dynamic.

Artwork for buildings had a quality pass over them too, as they try to make them more "in line with the ancient civilization that it's meant to represent: Babylon during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages" and they said the overall style and level of detail has increased a bit too.

Windowed mode was also added, fruit trees inspired by pomegranate which is a little more accurate instead of AoE styled bushes, even Farms were made to be more accurate to the setting to be inspired by another native food plant with the chickpea. There's also now a zoom in/out button, performance optimizations and more. Their use of Unity Analytics is now opt-in for Windows/macOS, while on Linux it's mentioned but Unity confirmed since the plugin doesn't support Linux fully Unity themselves automatically remove Linux info sent to them so that's good to know.

I've played a good few games in this latest release, and their work on it is showing. It feels good, really good. As a fan of such RTS games, I'm enjoying it more and more with each big update.

Find The Fertile Crescent free on itch.io.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
6 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
1 comment

razing32 Mar 21, 2020
Just downloaded and played around.
Plays alot differently than AOE with the food an research mechanic.
Hope they add more upgrades to food production and drop off points for lumber and metal in the future.
Nice game overall.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.