Genie Engine - Legacy

Legacy

The games based on the engine have usually been rated highly with Age of Empires having sold over three million copies by 2000 and having an average score of 87% from Game Rankings. The Age of Kings was a bigger critical success than the first game, with Game Rankings and Metacritic scores of 92%. The Age of Empires expansions for both games received slightly less praise but were still very well received.Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds received generally positive reviews, both from critics and fans. GameRankings gave the game a score of 77%, based on 38 media outlets. However, the Genie games did have vocal critics.

The Genie engine was succeeded by the Age of Mythology engine used by the games in that series as well as Age of Empires III and its expansions. The most significant changes being the updated graphics engine and the inclusion of the Havok physics middleware engine and the introduction of home cities.

The design of the Genie engine has been mirrored in later game titles such as Empire Earth, Cossacks: European Wars, Theocracy, Rise of Nations, and Stronghold. Most of these games have also been critically successful. The in-development free software real time strategy game 0 A.D. by Wildfire Games started out as an Age of Empires II modification and boasts many similarities to Age of Empires in its current design on top of its new engine Pyrogenesis. Another free software project is trying to more directly mimic Age of Empires and the Genie engine, written in Gambas.