Anno 117 will be released directly on Steam. This is just as official as of this minute the Steam page for Anno 117where you can of course wishlist the building game directly.
Good news, even if it should come as no surprise to you as a good-looking and well-informed GameStar community.
After all, Ubisoft had already announced in a financial report in September that it would be waiving the originally announced Epic Store exclusivity for Assassin's Creed Shadows. It literally said:
The game will mark the return of our new releases on Steam on Day 1.
Anyone who knows a little grammar and therefore also the plural may have already concluded at the time that the chances of a Day 1 Steam release of Anno 117 are pretty good. Still, it's nice to have certainty now.
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Anno 117: The first teaser trailer for the Roman building game
What the first screenshots reveal
As expected, the newly launched Steam page is holding back with new information about the building game. The detailed gamescom preview of Anno 117 by Fabiano will keep you up to date with the latest information.
As with the teaser trailer, the Steam page limits the release date to “2025”. Given the still sparse information available, we would rather guess autumn or winter.
And there is something completely new, namely the first five “real” screenshots from the construction game. To date, Ubisoft Mainz had only published concept and building graphics. The developers also emphasize in the screenshots that this is an early version of the game and not the final quality.
The information content of the new images is accordingly limited; they only show different landscape panoramas of the two previously confirmed regions of Albion and Lazio. However, a few details can already be gleaned:
- The basic look of the landscape is immediately reminiscent of Anno 1800. As expected, it seems to be a further developed version of the same graphics engine.
- The Albion screenshot focuses on a swamp landscape. It can therefore be assumed that the draining of moors and swamps will be a central game element for your settlements in Albion.
- Wisps of fog can be seen in Albion. In any case, a graphical innovation compared to Anno 1800, which of course raises the question of whether such weather effects only serve to add atmosphere or also have a gameplay impact.
- If you take a closer look at Lazio, you will notice the purple fields. We strongly suspect lavender, which Ubisoft had already teased in the first artwork for Anno 117. This could mean that lavender is a natural resource that you can harvest directly without having to create dedicated fields.
Link to Podcast content
In any case, the developers stick to their salami tactics and only publish new information about Anno 117 in bits and pieces. As information-hungry games journalists, this only tastes so mediocre to us, but of course you can still be sure that you won't miss a single thing on GameStar. What do you think of the first screenshots? And can you find any details that we missed? Write it to us in the comments.