Nerd Girl Thoughts

I’ve selected 15 games that I’ve never played from my Steam library and committed to playing each one for at least 45 minutes this month. The Battle for Polytopia is the first game I played from this project.

I have played a lot of Civilization across the years (and the iterations of the series), but otherwise, I tend to shy away from 4X strategy games because of the time commitment they usually require. So imagine my surprise when I fired up The Battle of Polytopia and discovered that the default play mode gives you a mere 30 turns to do your worst. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised how well this game scratches that “small bites” gaming itch considering it was originally created for mobile devices.

There are twelve different tribes to choose from in the base game, with another four that can be purchased. Each tribe starts with a different advantage, and on a different type of terrain. It sounds more complex than it is – I chose the Hoodrick tribe for my first game because starting with a ranged combat unit sounded super helpful, but for my remaining games, I went for random tribe. It doesn’t take long to earn stars – the currency you’ll need for terrain improvements, additional units, and technology research, so you can quickly take advantage of whatever tech your starting area seems most suited to.

In my – admittedly limited – experience, other tribes you encounter are pretty focused on the e(X)termination, and once I realized that and also got aggressive myself, I started having far greater success. Every mechanic in the game is super simple, and it’s nearly impossible to lose on the easiest difficulty. However, a big part of what gives this title replay value is chasing higher and higher scores.

The Battle of Polytopia isn’t a game I’m likely to grind away at – chasing high scores has never really been my thing – but it’s fun in short bursts, and I felt like I was getting it a little more with each game I played. There are a whole mess of difficulty levels & game modes that will help keep things fresh, and it does offer multiplayer, although I don’t expect that’s something I’ll ever touch. I expect it’ll be my go-to game for a little while for those times where I don’t have very long to play.