Feral News

Building Rome: The art of ROME: Total War on iPad

Rome wasn’t built in a day – and for iPad it took a while. Here we describe our journey in a series of five enlightening dev diaries, from our first experiments with touch controls right through to completing the full and glorious experience of ROME: Total War on iPad.

We don’t normally get to redo artwork for our games, so we were very excited when the opportunity came along with ROME: Total War for iPad. We worked with a team of talented artists, some of whom had provided art for Creative Assembly on other Total War games.

The art for ROME: Total War has always been something special, but the UI was built in 2004 for lower-resolution screens, and didn't transfer fantastically to the Retina screen of the iPad.

So we spruced it up, preserving the original look while perfecting it for the greatly increased screen res.

The artists painstakingly repainted over 1400 icons, cards and map images at four times their size. They even drew some from scratch. We then added the new art to the game for a super-sharp finish.

While we’re on the subject of gorgeous aesthetics, we hope you’ve admired the opening, prologue and faction introduction cutscenes on your iPad. We rerecorded them from 4K Mac displays to achieve the most spectacular quality possible.

ROME: Total War is now available for iPad on the App Store. Advance to the minisite for videos, screenshots, and tips on building and ruling your empire.

El Presidente of the Metaverse — Tropico Out Now on Meta Quest!

Strap on your headset, your sun hat and your flip-flops — Tropico is out now on Meta Quest!

Get a fresh perspective on the beloved city-building and politics sim, completely immersing yourself in the role of El Prez across 40 missions and an endlessly replayable sandbox mode.

Use intuitive VR controls to build, bribe, politic and power-grab. Take in the sun, sea and sand as you design your Caribbean creations from on high. Keep a very close eye on your adoring public, and ensure that the elections are forever in your favour!

Head to the Meta Store and seize power in Tropico for $29.99 / £22.99 / €29.99 today.

Make Island Dreaming a Virtual Reality in Tropico — Landing on Meta Quest on March 28th

Become El Presidente and take hold of the levers of power, in Tropico for Meta Quest, arriving the 28th of March!

For Feral’s first foray into virtual reality, we have followed our tried-and-tested approach of bringing a classic and much-loved game to an exciting new platform, without compromise.

Bring your grand visions to life in the humorous city builder and political sim, expertly adapted for VR — with over 40 missions to tackle, using a custom-built interface and intuitive controls.

Promise, parley and propagandise your way to a neverending term in office. Immerse yourself in Tropico, and transform this untapped pocket of paradise into an industrial powerhouse, a tourist playground and a budding superpower — all under your firm, but fair hand.

Wishlist today to book your ticket to a Caribbean paradise of your own making — coming to Meta Quest on the 28th of March.