Battle for Polytopia is a game we have known for a long time, and which already had its place in this section when we discovered it: its interesting mix of Age of Empires Yes Civilization in a simple turn-based strategy game, this results in one of the best “vices” you can have on your iPhone or iPad.
Now Battle for Polytopia introduces big changes with Moonrise, its awesome new version that finally hit mobile phones after landing on macOS through Steam. Its system remains the same, but with a few additions that give it even more playability and possibilities.
Absurdly large cards that allow long and complicated games
The main change is the new creative game mode
They may seem like linear improvements, but the consequences during the game are much richer. Now you can not only prepare a casual game of about 20 minutes to entertain yourself on a subway ride through the city, but also organize huge battles to conquer countless cities. games that can perfectly last more than two hours of clock.
In addition, in these cards we also have the possibility of choose from several types of geography like mountains, islands, continents … a lot Age of Empires. And the bigger the map, the harder it gets in the final section of the game, where you’ll have to conquer the few remaining rivals on many other fronts at the same time. And for those looking for a multiplayer game, these can now be played in real time.
This same reason which gives more duration and complexity to the games also reveals a small lack: in the advanced phases of the game, the generation of resources is no longer necessary. You can see the devs were thinking about something pretty casual, and now that they’ve lengthened it with bigger cards, I see that once we’ve looked at the whole tech tree, we just need to focus on winning.
Longer playtime leaves room for future updates that will further complicate the game
Maybe this can be solved in the future by expanding the tree of technologies we can research, or creating more advanced and expensive units. Right now, the idea is to keep making improvements to the game, so there is a way for the game makers to come up with more updates in the future.
The business model remains the same, which I already said was very successful in its time: you can play Battle for Polytopia Moonrise free, with the possibility of paying to be able to choose between more tribes. At most you spend around 20 dollars, and it is not at all compulsory. Also, if you had already purchased optional tribes in the first version of the game, you will continue to have them in the new extended version.
That said, I’m sticking with my thirteen: Battle for Polytopia is a great game for casual games on iPhone (and much better on iPad). But now, with this new version called Moonrise, Battle for Polytopia also becomes a game for those who want to sit comfortably on a sofa and spend the afternoon in one of its most complex games. You can download the new version from the App Store.