Returning to The Nations

How a 2001 city-building sim flipped gender roles and raised both eyebrows and questions

Twenty six megabytes. Twenty-two extra missions. No extra cost. I wanted to play JoWooD’s successor to Alien Nations. It was six years after The Nations’ release that I finally got my hands on the game (courtesy of my father who had just returned from a business trip). This was the time when game discs actually contained the entire game. I popped the colourful disc into my archaic PC and headed to school; the installation was completed by the time I returned home. With no pesky downloads to stop me, I dived right in.

Lukkat is home to three tribes: The Pimmons, the Amazones (creative licence) and the Sajikis. Think of the Pimmons as blue hobbits who’d choose mushroom brandy over world domination. A wise choice. Amazones, as one would expect, are a fierce, war-mongering tribe led by glamorous women who are bound by principles. Sajikis are crafty insect-like beings who don’t really care about hygiene or social distance and fulfil their psychoactive recreational needs by smoking worms.

In case you’re wondering, the worms are called cigarillos. Neat.

Each tribe has its own quirks, be it fashion, culture or architecture. This lends The Nations a dash of character that few city-building sims can claim to possess. Even the manner in which tribe members idle or go about their day is unique, built on a diverse set of philosophies and rituals. The pixelated yet artfully-rendered buildings themselves stand testament to this fact. One can easily spot the differences between an Amazone outpost itching for expansion and a Pimmon town crowded by taverns. The cutesy 2D isometric graphics, while not breathtaking, lend the 19-year-old game a sense of life and originality. Its vibrant colour palette looks fresher than ever, almost two decades from its launch. While the soundtrack is not among the more memorable ones out there, it keeps you grounded in a world where insects get hangovers and blue hobbits suffer from obesity.

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