Who We Are
Clarus Victoria is a small independent studio founded in 2013. We started with historical strategy games about Egypt, Greece, and the Bronze Age, and today we are exploring new forms of universal gameplay that merge strategy and RPG.
We are often called “history nerds” for our attention to detail and love of science, but we have never limited ourselves to history alone. Our goal is to find the Ideal Gameplay of the future: a game where the player is not constrained by genre or script and chooses for themselves who to be — an evil inventor, a shaman of a fishing tribe, the scientific director of a lunar base, or a king of Mesopotamia.
Vision
Imagine a game where you set the rules: choose the genre, the era, the world, and your role. For example: “history, Europe, France, role of a duke.” Or: “fantasy, future, fictional planet, elf chieftain.” Or even: “ancient Egyptian high priest of the sun.” You live in the world you choose and face its challenges: go on campaigns, pray, plunder, rescue. You can be killed, fall ill, get lost in the desert, or rise to power. Thousands of entities, states, and connections merge into a unified gamified semantic model. It makes the game deeper, more engaging, and more believable. This is the path to what we call Ideal Gameplay.
Our History
2013 — Founding
In early 2013, Mikhail Vasiliev left his previous job and decided to try independent development. The first project was Stone Age. He had to learn the entire process in a short time — from code to graphics. In spring, a free flash version was released, and by autumn, mobile releases of Stone Age and an improved Bronze Age followed. That became the starting point.
2013–2016 — Growth
In 2014, Marble Age was released, a strategy game about the rise of a Greek polis. In 2016 came Predynastic Egypt, a game about the birth of ancient Egyptian civilization.
This was a period of growth and increasing complexity. Mechanics became deeper, the visual style more expressive, and the player community more active. It was important to us to show that history could be not just decoration, but the very basis of gameplay.
That is why in creating Predynastic Egypt we collaborated with scholars from the Center for Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This allowed us to verify facts, dive into details, and reflect real processes rather than schematic models.
2016 — The Idea
In the final stage of Predynastic Egypt, studio head and game designer Mikhail Vasiliev formed the concept of “Ideal Gameplay” — the game of the future in which the player is not limited by genre or script. It became clear that the path to it lay through universal gameplay: a system uniting different mechanics, genres, and settings, allowing the player to choose what kind of game to play.
This idea did not yet have a clear form, but even then it began to germinate and partially manifest in later projects.
2017–2018 — Old Kingdom
The next step was developing Egypt: Old Kingdom. The game was released in 2018 and combined everything we had learned: deeper mechanics, attention to historical detail, and our own visual style.
For us, this was a milestone. We sought to convey the scale of the Old Kingdom: building pyramids, developing Memphis, coping with crises and droughts. Players noted that it was no longer just a “strategy about Egypt” but an attempt to recreate the very spirit of the era.
More than ten people — permanent and external specialists — worked on the project. It seemed the studio was moving beyond indie and standing on the threshold of something truly big.
2018 — Turning Point
After Egypt: Old Kingdom, we received not only support but crucial feedback. Players said our games were too linear and lacked replay value. They asked for more variety, the ability to play as different Egyptian tribes, and to expand geography — Mesopotamia, China, Rus.
These expectations aligned with our internal search. After Predynastic Egypt we had already conceived the idea of universal gameplay, but in 2018 it became clear: the old model was exhausted. To move forward, we had to go beyond familiar frameworks.
Thus began the transition from classical historical strategies to experiments — the search for new mechanics, architectures, and formats that could form the basis of a universal system for future games.
2018–2021 — Decline
After Egypt: Old Kingdom, the studio tried to move toward universal gameplay. One by one, new projects started: Egypt: New Kingdom, Primal Australia, Population, Adaptarium, Rome.
Each brought new ideas, but none became a complete game. Some hit dead ends in mechanics, others in maps, and some concepts proved too cumbersome. Gradually, projects were frozen.
In parallel, almost without Mikhail’s involvement, the team released Marble Age: Remastered (2020). Essentially, this was the last project of the “old team.”
Resources dwindled, the team disbanded, and Mikhail was left working alone — thus ended the studio’s heavy period of decline.
2021–2024 — Dark Age
Mikhail started from scratch and focused on fundamental work: analyzing dozens of games, identifying universal principles, and testing them in prototypes.
Most projects were frozen, and huge amounts of work were discarded. The only release was Flint Age (2022) — an awkward and rough game, but an important step. To finish it, Mikhail used AI for the first time to assist in creating graphics.
These were hard years: the search for the “grail” often felt hopeless. But it was in this darkness that the foundation of a future breakthrough was laid.
2024–2025 — New Era
After seven years of experiments we achieved the main goal — to create a foundation for universal gameplay. The result was Next Run (2025).
The project took on an unusual genre for the studio — strategic RPG — and a fantasy setting. It combined RPG and strategy mechanics: the player roleplays a hero while also forming a party, conquering, and developing regions. The fantasy world allowed us to move beyond history and freely experiment with maps, creatures, and magic.
New tools, including AI technologies, were used, allowing us to focus on the gameplay core. In the process, clarity emerged on how to structure mechanics, engine architecture, and the world map — knowledge that became the foundation for future projects.
2026+ — Next Project
In the near future — a new game and the development of a universal engine that will expand the mechanics of Next Run. We want to give players more freedom: controlling multiple heroes, introducing a decree system, and reworking combat mechanics.
In parallel, we will expand the team and improve art, animation, and sound quality. We plan to return to historical strategies, but on a new foundation where variety and replayability will be key. History will not be the only theme — universal gameplay will let us work with other genres and settings as well. Another goal is to speed up project releases so that new games come out more regularly.