About Pharaoh
Pharaoh is an isometric city-building game that Impressions Games created and Sierra Studios published for Windows. It was released in North America on November 2, 1999 and in the UK on November 19, 1999. Chris Beatrice designed it, Ken Parker and Greg Sheppard produced it, and Henry Beckett and Keith Zizza wrote the music.
The game uses the same engine and principles as Caesar III, and it was the first game in Sierra’s City Building series to leave Rome for another ancient civilization. You oversee the construction and running of cities and settlements in Ancient Egypt, managing nearly every part of them so that citizens are fed, employed and healthy, and protected from disease, disasters and war. DOS.Zone’s own description adds monuments to that list of jobs. It is a single-player game.
An expansion, Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile, was developed by a different studio, BreakAway Games, and released in July 2000 in North America and September 2000 in Europe. In 2001 the game and the expansion were sold together as Pharaoh Gold. Much later, in 2023, Triskell Interactive and Dotemu released a remake called Pharaoh: A New Era.
How it runs in your browser
The Play button opens the game’s page on dos.zone in a new tab, where it’s listed as Pharaoh Gold. DOS.Zone runs the original Windows version in js-dos, its open-source port of DOSBox to the browser, which emulates an entire PC inside the tab. The game files load from the site itself, so you install nothing, supply no files and create no account. DOS.Zone doesn’t carry ads.
The listing shows a five-star average from 27 player reviews and sorts the game under management, economic and strategy among its Windows 95 titles. It doesn’t state whether the Cleopatra content is part of the upload, and it doesn’t say whether your saved cities carry over from one session to the next. If either matters to you, check the host’s page first.
Controls and devices
Pharaoh is played with a keyboard and mouse. DOS.Zone doesn’t list the controls for this game, so use the game’s own menus to learn them. Once it loads, click inside the game area so the emulator picks up your input.
On phones, DOS.Zone shows virtual on-screen controls, but Pharaoh was designed for a keyboard and mouse, so a desktop or laptop is the better fit. Chromebooks are untested.
Who it’s for
Pharaoh suits players who built Egyptian cities in it around the turn of the century and want to see them again, and city-builder fans curious about the original game behind Pharaoh: A New Era. If you’d rather govern a Roman province, Caesar III is the earlier Impressions game whose engine Pharaoh shares, and it also runs on DOS.Zone.
Is Pharaoh Free, Safe and Official?
Can I play Pharaoh online for free?
Yes, in a browser. DOS.Zone runs the Windows game for free under the name Pharaoh Gold, with no account and nothing to install. It’s single-player, so there’s no online mode.
Is Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile included?
DOS.Zone lists the game as Pharaoh Gold, the name of the 2001 bundle of Pharaoh and Cleopatra, but its page doesn’t say what the upload contains. Check the game’s menus to see whether the expansion is there.
Does Pharaoh work on a phone?
DOS.Zone has virtual on-screen controls for phones, but Pharaoh was built for a keyboard and mouse, so a computer is the better choice.
