Rise Through the Ages
An endless 3D civilisation strategy RPG: found a settlement, restore abandoned villages, lead heroes and grow from the Founding age to the Horizon of 2050.
About Rise Through the Ages
Rise Through the Ages is an original strategy game with role-playing heroes, set in a world that keeps generating as you explore it. You start with a small founding settlement - a civic centre, homes, farms, a lumber yard and a warehouse - a handful of workers and guards, and a commander. Everything else is up to you: what to build, where to expand, which technologies to research, when to fight and who to trade with.
The land is full of history. Abandoned villages sit in the forests and hills with their ruined buildings still standing; claim one with your workers and restore its buildings instead of starting from nothing. Bandit camps, wild dens, supply caches, old ruins and strongholds held by named bosses wait for your heroes. Independent villages and travelling merchants trade with you - or turn against you if you attack them.
Rival nations play by the same rules. They farm, mine and trade, research their own technologies, recruit heroes, claim villages and, if they are aggressive, march on you. Seven ages change everything you see: Founding settlements of plaster and terracotta become stone Citadels, timber-framed Discovery towns, brick and iron Steam cities, concrete Mechanised industry, glass Digital districts and finally the clean, solar Horizon of 2050 - with the armies, ships and aircraft of each age.
How to play
- Choose your nation, a world seed and how many rival nations to face, then found your settlement.
- Select your workers and open Build to place farms, housing and workshops inside your border. Keep food positive and people housed so the settlement grows.
- Research technologies, then advance to the next age once its required technologies are done. Each age unlocks new buildings, units and equipment.
- Explore with heroes and scouts. Claim abandoned villages, take quests, clear camps and strongholds, and level your heroes' skills and equipment.
Controls
- Mouse: left-click to select, drag a box to select several units, right-click to give an order (move, attack, build, restore or visit). Right-drag rotates the camera and the wheel zooms.
- Keyboard: W, A, S, D or the arrow keys pan, Q and E rotate, Space pauses, + and - change the speed, B opens Build, R rotates a building you are placing, Ctrl + 1 to 5 saves a group and 1 to 5 recalls it.
- Touch: tap to select, tap the ground or an enemy with units selected to order them, drag to pan, pinch to zoom, twist to rotate, and use Box select to pick several units. A long press orders an attack-move.
The rules
- Buildings go inside a settlement's border. Their cost is held when you place them and refunded for the unbuilt part if you cancel. Workers build them; more workers build faster.
- An abandoned village is claimed by keeping workers (or an Engineer hero) in it for 60 seconds. If your nation has lost every settlement, the claim is free - the game never ends just because a war went badly.
- Rival nations can be traded with, allied with or fought. Attacking an independent village or merchant asks you to confirm first and costs reputation with every independent settlement.
- Bosses show where their heavy attacks will land with a red ring at least a second and a half before they strike. Downed heroes can be revived by an ally standing beside them, or recalled after a short wait.
- Fictional strategic weapons are off by default. When a world turns them on, a launch needs the Digital age, two buildings, a large cost and two separate confirmations.
Scoring, saving and limits
There is no score and no end. Your nation's chronicle records the settlements you founded, claimed, restored and captured, the bosses your heroes defeated and the ages you reached. The Empire panel shows your totals at any time.
The world autosaves every minute of play into this browser on this device, keeping three rotating autosaves, and you can save to five manual slots. Export writes a compressed save file you can import again later or on another device; imports are checked fully before they replace anything. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.
Needs a browser with WebGL 2; a recent phone runs it at a lower graphics quality. The simulation runs in a background worker. People, buildings, vehicles and animals are stylised low-poly models built in code rather than detailed scanned or hand-modelled assets, and sound effects are simple synthesised tones. Nations, places and history are fictional.
Accessibility
Every panel action is a real button with keyboard focus and screen reader labels. Units and settlements carry text labels as well as colour, and resource changes show signs as well as colour. Sound is off until you turn it on, labels and goals can be hidden, and the game pauses itself when the tab is hidden.
Questions
- Does the game ever end?
- No. The world keeps generating new land as you explore, the final Horizon age keeps going with mastery research, and even a nation that loses every settlement can claim an abandoned village for free and start again.
- Do the rival nations cheat?
- No. Rival nations follow the same rules as you: they gather and spend real resources, research, build, claim villages and only know what they have scouted. Difficulty changes how quickly and aggressively they act, not what they are allowed to do.
- Are the weapons and history real?
- No. The nations, places and events are original and fictional. Strategic weapons are an optional, fictional late-game feature that is off unless you turn it on for a world.
- Can I move my save to another device?
- Yes. Open Saves, export the world to a file, then import that file on the other device. The file is checked for damage and version before it loads.