Ancient Rome wasn't built in a day (couldn't expect me to avoid the cliché, could you?), but it doesn't stop me from trying in Cradle of Rome, a matching game where players build a Roman empire complete with over 20 masterpieces from village and taverns to Coliseum and Pantheon. Players also work their way up from Peasant to Emperor of Rome.
The purpose is to match three or more of the same object to clear the game board, but it isn't that simple as you advance to higher levels. After conquering earlier epochs, the battles get harder as it takes two matches to destroy a box. Instead of building up frustration, bonuses appear along the way to help you destroy troublemaker spots. Such bonuses include a hammer that can break a box, a lightning bolt that randomly knocks out multiple boxes, not necessarily the ones you want, and a bomb that destroys a specific area. The game contains eight bonuses.
More challenging is getting rid of the chained boxes because the objects can't move. That means creating a match around the box to clear it. But that isn't where the challenge stops. You run into objects that have two chains on them and have little room to get other objects lined up to make a match.
The game board also changes as you advance higher up in the chain of command to make it difficult to clear objects in corners or to access the boxes that have only one way in. Beautiful scenes representing a part of your growing Roman city appear behind the game for environment variety.
When you lose all your men, the game ends. Fortunately, you don't have to start at the beginning and work your way up to the later levels. The game lets you pick up from the last epoch. As you advance in game play, you pick up strategies for getting better at defeating the board. Unfortunately, no strategy comes to mind for defeating the piles of objects that are double-chained with little room to make matches. More bonuses are needed. Too bad, you can't bribe anyone for them.
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