The Age of Empires franchise stands as the quintessential hallmark of real-time strategy (RTS) games. Since its inception in 1997, the series has captivated millions with its blend of historical grandeur, strategic depth, and immersive gameplay. Players are transported through the ages, from the Stone Age to the Imperial Age, commanding civilizations, building empires, and engaging in epic battles.

Since 2013, Forgotten Empires has been a key part in the development of the Microsoft owned franchise; who entrusted us to lead the charge on the Definitive Editions for Age of Empires I, II and III, which eventually culminated into the release of Age of Empires IV.

After more than 25 years, Age of Empires remains a beloved classic and a benchmark for the genre.

Forged in the flames of fandom, Forgotten Empires started as a small group of modders, setting out to expand “Age of Empires II”. The mod garnered quite a bit of attention within the community and with over 1 million downloads, the team reached out to Microsoft, asking if they’d be interested to do something with the mod.

Microsoft was working to release Age of Empires II on Steam and took the team on board to further develop the mod and turn it into an official part of the franchise.

Satisfied with the reception and release of “Age of Empires II: The Forgotten”, the team continued to bring new expansions to the game, before eventually setting their sights on other games in the franchise.

With the success of the revival of Age of Empires II, Microsoft set their sights on the entire franchise. They created an internal studio to manage the franchise and entrusted Forgotten Empires with remastering all original games.

Once Age of Empires II was due for a remaster, the gloves had to come off. The game was too big and a remaster could only succeed. Failure was not an option.

The team at Forgotten Empires expanded and other studios joined the project, to tackle the remastering of a behemoth. Alongside the team at Microsoft we were successful at spearheading the vision and set the standard for “Definitive Editions” for years to come.

The team at Forgotten Empires worked closely with all partners, leading design, narrative direction, level creation, art direction and outsourcing, AI development and new content creation. Eventually the project solidified our relationship with Microsoft and we ended up working on every Age of Empires title which followed.

The final stop on our journey to remastering the original games was Age of Empires III. Which saw a beautiful remaster which we built alongside various dev partners. Once again the team at Forgotten Empires focused heavily on the creative side, including content creation, level design, new art, gameplay mechanics and AI.

Microsoft has publicly stressed the value of partners, working on the franchise with them and displaying the strength of co-development.

While Forgotten Empires laid out the runway for a successful revival of the Age of Empires franchise, Microsoft, World’s Edge and Relic Entertainment were working for years on the true successor:

“Age of Empires IV”

While our team grew, working on the legacy games, we did join the final production stages of development of AoE4 to share learnings with our partners. The power of partnership.

Due to the success of the series at large, we ended up creating over a dozen DLC across the franchise, further expanding on the “Age” universe.

The entire franchise is a hallmark of co-development. Want to know more on how this can work for you? Contact us!