The bar for strategy games is extremely high nowadays – Civilization 6, the original Frostpunk, and Cities Skylines 1 set such superlative standards that even their own sequels have struggled by comparison, with Civ 7, Frostpunk 2, and CS2 still fighting to win back players. Kaiserpunk, too, has had a tough time on Steam. Released on March 21, while user reviews have slowly become more positive, it still bears the ignominious mark of an official ‘mixed’ rating, owing to criticisms about performance and presentation. Ambitious and original, Kaiserpunk may still require improvement, but it has a lot to offer. If you’ve stayed away from it so far, a transformative new update might be enough to draw you in.
A combination of grand strategy games and city-building games, Kaiserpunk is essentially split in two. At the smaller scale, you’re responsible for cultivating a bustling, post-WW1 metropolis complete with housing, amenities, agriculture, and industry. Locate resources. Engineer supply chains. Maximize production. Kaiserpunk has a fantastic building system that lets you develop complex, interconnected cities with ease. When you place a depot, so long as its radius of influence overlaps with your factory, it will collect and deliver the factory’s goods. The same goes for other aspects of the manufacturing chain, so it’s simple to lock everything together.
At the macro level, Kaiserpunk takes place in an alternate history where The Great War has left the entire world fragmented into hostile city states. The goal, ultimately, is to unite everybody under one banner – using a world map, you move your armies across Europe and Asia, fight turn and stats-based battles, and then add territory and cities into your own sphere of influence. The smaller-scale municipal management thus feeds into the greater war effort: your settlements need to hum with productivity, in order to supply food, weapons, and soldiers for the campaign.
Although 68% of user reviews for Kaiserpunk are positive, the strategy game has faced criticism due to some technical issues and problems with the interface and overall visual quality. In response, developer Overseer Games has just deployed a sizable update, designed to optimize the game, remedy some of the biggest problems that were causing regular crashes, and improve readability across all of Kaiserpunk’s menus. Lighting has been improved, harvesting water has been made easier (deposits are now infinite), and dozens of maps across all regions have been overhauled for performance.
Thanks to an earlier patch, the enemy armies in Kaiserpunk have become more aggressive, and now pose a greater challenge, and key features like screen-edge scrolling have been introduced. There is still a way for Kaiserpunk to go, but if you want to try it yourself right now, just head here.
Otherwise, play some of the best war games, or maybe the best 4X games available on PC right now.
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