The premise of the game is that you are the governor of a colony ship and must search out a suitable new land and found a thriving new economy. The challenge is to build a balanced community that manages to feed and cloth it's citizens and supply them with the ever increasing demands for luxury goods.

The game is played on an isometric map in the vein of most RTS games of today. Game decisions are based around what and where you construct the buildings that make your township. Various buildings form economic chains that at the end produce a set goods that can either be sold or traded. For example you can build a small farm that will produce food, but with the addition of a potato field will produce ale that in turn can be sold through a tavern (having fun yet?). Various buildings have zones of coverage and you need to be careful to ensure each link of the chain sits within the right zone.

Once your community is up and running the only intervention required from the player is with a few of the buildings and what items they produce. What to produce is based on the demands of your people. This is determined by selecting a house and seeing what they are not getting enough off (sounds exciting - Ed). Where for any reason you can't produce a particular item you can (if they exist on the map) trade with other towns. This you do by selecting the warehouse then selecting the trade goods you want to exchange and then loading them onto the ship. You then sail off to the intended recipient, unload the ship, negotiate the exchange, load your goods onto... (the remaining text has been deleted in the interests containing the readers excitement)

Additional buildings are unlocked as your population increases and this is achieved by building more houses. This requires resources of which you never seem to have enough. Often in the game you will find yourself sitting back watching the exciting action as you will the timber cutter to cut more wood and have it delivered to the warehouse. Unfortunately this is a painful process as it takes a lot of game time for what seems a small amount of wood. There is a lot of new buildings to unlock and these in turn create the opportunities for more complex chains in the economy (oh be still my beating heart).

Yes you can build troops, warships and even a fortress. These can be used as protection from other civilisations and the Pirates. This is very standard fare with a small amount of different units and possible formations with combat outcome based largely on force selection and size. This is possibly the high point in the game but ultimately it is mediocre in it's delivery.

The graphics engine used in 1503 is dated. The developers have attempted to deliver the feel of the period and some effort has been made to animate some of the buildings and people, however there is not enough of this. Given the slow progress of the game interesting and varied animation would have gone some way to hold the players interest. You can zoom in and out of the playing map, or change it's view to the four points of the compass but ultimately it is a 2D isometric playing area that is both bland and granulated in it's style.

The game controls are not particularly intuitive and at time quirky at best. There are both vertical and horizontal icon tabs that take you to further icons you can select. The pictures at times are a bit confusing but luckily you can hold the cursor over them to get a text description. There is a comprehensive help section and this is well put together with explanations offering further links to aid you in figuring out the production chains. We felt with practice it would become easier to use however given the amount of time between building decisions while resources are accumulated you often forgot what you did previously.

Sound effects in the game are limited with simple confirmation messages and few ambient sounds. Again given the lack of game play interest you would have thought more effort would have been made in this area. Music is a small selection of period pieces that in our view should have been left in that period. They only add to the desire to seek a wall and determine the paint evaporation quotient.

There is a campaign that you can play through which will present you with more difficult challenges the further you progress (less resources and more enemies). At the end of the day though it is disappointing that more thought was not put into this and some effort made to build a comprehensive campaign around the settlement of the Americas or even Australasia.