Jose Zagal's Home Page - Games & Game Studies

Home	Talks and Slides	My GameLog	Research and Projects	Publications	Resume	Teaching
Back // GameBreadth Project // Game Ontology Project // GameLog

The Battle of Polytopia (iPd) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Saturday 8 July, 2017 // I stopped playing this game on: Tuesday 1 August, 2017
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
August 1, 2017 07:09:07 PM
I saw this described (in a tweet, of all things) as Civ-lite and so I immediately picked it up. I don't recall if it was free or super cheap, but I've played enough that I think I'm done. Mostly because I played twice on the hardest difficulty level and won a match on the 2nd game. I guess that's sort of like quitting on a high point? It really does feel like Civ-lite, and that's a good thing. As in, it feels honest to the last version of Civ I played...which was a while ago. In a nutshell you start with a city and then find others by getting barbarian tribes to join you. You can also get more cities by conquering them. Once conquered, cities produce a currency that you use to spend on either tech upgrades or cranking out military units. It's an all-out game of extermination, which I guess isn't really Civ (though mostly is?), but...I guess I was ok with that? I played (and won) with all of the starter civilizations (each one has a different starting tech unlocked) and wasn't really into paying to unlock the rest. I'm not sure what the rest really do, since the bonus ability is one that everyone can gain access to (it's also not uncommon to unlock the entire tech tree in a match). I like how the wonders worked - you don't have to research or pay for them. Rather, they're awarded (and they're not unique, so different civs can each have them AFAIK) when you complete a certain objective. For example, spend a number of rounds without attacking, or unlocking the entire tech tree, or exploring the entire map, etc. There's quite a lot of them so chances are you won't get them all in a single game - but you will get several. So, they feel like little prizes you get along the way. I don't feel like I purposefully chased them down (with a few exceptions), but I'm glad they're there. OVerall, glad I played, I'll be moving on to something else though..

The Battle of Polytopia (iPd)