Illyriad

Illyriad is set in a persistent fantasy world – when a player logs out, the game continues. Players start with a single town in which they construct and upgrade buildings and conduct research to unlock new technologies. Player civilizations can be expanded by conquering cities, sending settlers to colonize new lands or claiming sovereignty to expand player influence. It has a gameworld of over 4 million squares - the majority of which can be settled with a city.

The game has four playable races, each with their own advantages and disadvantages: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs.

Illyriad began development in 2009, and was the first game developed by Illyriad Games Ltd. It began with 3 developers and 3 artists, however only 2 were full-time - with the others working at other jobs. The core Illyriad development team's background was from web and enterprise software, not games - and the initial content was provided by volunteers.

James Niesewand, Illyriad Games founder, described the process: "From start to finish it took us about a year to get something playable ... for us that was just the point at which we had something fun that people could enjoy. At that stage we put the game live, invited people to play, and worked on improving the game in line with the players’ feedback."

Of the three games chosen to go with Massively on a trip to the desert island Illyriad was one of them: "...I would have to go with Illyriad, the fantastic browser-based city-builder.... Illyriad is a delight to play." and added: "Given Illyriad's realistic trade, amazing community, and variable-speed gameplay, I would be insane to leave this one off the list."

It was also selected for the top eleven (in no particular order) of Massively's Fifty games for the mobile lifestyle: "This little surprise [Illyriad] has taken hold of me. Imagine an epic RTS but with killer lore and an awesome community."