Months after the release of Zeus: Master of Olympus, the third game of Impressions' famed city-building series, there had been a whole bunch of rumors in various Zeus fan sites of Impressions Games secretly developing a special expansion pack. None of the rumors were confirmed since Impressions Games refused to release any information to the public. But recently, many of the rumors have been proven true when Impressions Games finally announced the release of Poseidon, the official expansion of Zeus.

In Poseidon, players would be able to construct the fabled city of Atlantis and establish various colonies around the world and trade and interact with other ancient civilizations. There isn't much information right now about what cultures players would be interacting with since Poseidon is still a long way from being completed.

Poseidon features several new gods and monsters. One of them is Hera, queen of Olympus - the goddess that most people on the forums of the Zeus sites hope to see. Since Zeus was the most powerful god in the game, hopefully Hera would be able to put that horny old goat in his place. Though Atlas isn't an Olympian (he's actually a Titan), he is in the expansion along with Hera. Other than Hera and Atlas, information on other gods, if there are any others, and the monsters have yet to have been released.

Other new interesting features of Poseidon are the new science structures and several extra aesthetics structures as well. While Greek cities can still build culture structures like gymnasiums and theaters, Atlantean cities build science structures like observatories but they can't build culture structures. According to the developers on the official Zeus forum, the reason for this is because science is the culture of Atlantis. An interesting new addition is the racetrack and the chariot and a new resource that only the Atlantean can harvest called 'orichalc'. Of course I have no idea what it is and what it does, but it's likely that it has something to do with the Atlantean science buildings.

Poseidon is scheduled to be released sometime around summer this year. Beta-testing sign-ups just began last Friday and will continue till the end of this week. For more information or to sign up for the Poseidon beta version testing, visit the official Zeus web site at zeus.impressionsgames.com

· · · Kane