What does one year, one month, three weeks, and much speculation get you? A HOMMV for OSX port, thats what.

Freeverse announced today that HOMMV is shipping for the Mac. As is typical for the HOMM franchise, it was an opera of the most dramatic kind to get this port done. Initially a traditional port using Russian programmers, Freeverse became the first OSX test-case by using new Cider technology to bring HOMMV over. As far as we can tell, the Russians were dumped sometime in the late summer or early fall, meaning the Cider turn-around time was only around 4 months. Not bad! This bodes well for the potential of future ports, though at this point, we’re not sure any other major commercial Cider ports have been announced.

However, it doesn’t bode well for the future of PPC gaming. HOMMV is available exclusively for Intel-based Macs. Freeverse went to some pain however to make sure teh widest available Intel-based Mac profiles would be supported. Minimum system requirements are set as an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X v10.4.8 or later, 512MB RAM, 2GB free hard disk space, DVD-ROM drive and Internet connection for multiplayer. Gamers with integrated graphics chips, such as MacBook portables and headless MacMinis are said to be able to play the game quite well, albeit with reduced resolution and other graphic bells and whistles reduced. The HOMM series has always been about challenging strategic gameplay, so despite the graphic murkiness, this is well within the realm of potentially good gameplay.

I’ll be posting two reviews early next week. The first will deal with the quality of the Mac port, specifically considering your legitimate performance expectations and other traditionally annoying issues like cross-platform networking. The second review will take a look at the gameplay itself to determine where HOMMV falls in the turn-based strategy canon.