User Guide

219
Designer’s Notes
One final note: There is often a tendency to ascribe the
success of any really great game (and in case you
haven’t guessed, we think
Pharaoh is a really great
game) to a single individual “visionary”, or “star”.
Maybe epilogues like these “designer’s notes” I’m now
writing are evidence of this…I don’t know.
I do know, however, that
Pharaoh could not have been
possible without the extraordinary talents of all of the
development staff here at Impressions. It has of course
been my job (and my pleasure) to lay the foundation
for what
Pharaoh would be, and to provide a (hopeful-
ly gentle) guiding hand to keep it on track, but it is the
art, programming, production, music, sound design,
play testing and writing staff here at Impressions who
truly bring a game like
Pharaoh to life. Each adds his
or her own unique touch, while remaining true to the
character of what we’ve collectively created, and once
a project like this is underway, it positively takes on a
life of its own (which I must say is truly magnificent to
see).
What’s more, although
Pharaoh has been largely
brought to fruition by a certain “core team” of indi-
viduals, in fact by the time any one of our games leaves
the studio and enters the world, pretty much everyone
at Impressions — including members of other project
teams — has contributed something to it. So above
all,
Pharaoh is an Impressions game, and one which I
hope will both entertain and inform for years to come.
Chris Beatrice
Cambridge, Massachusetts
September 1, 1999
218
Designer’s Notes