At the fundamental level, city building and grand strategy games aren’t especially compelling. But it’s the sights, the sounds, and scale that make games like Hearts of Iron, Civilization 6, Cities Skylines, and Frostpunk 2, come to life. The click-clack of laying down a building. The top-down view of your army. You begin with the details. Eventually, you sit back and marvel at the grandeur of what you’ve created. Ambitious and genre-blending, a new grand strategy game and city builder takes this ethos to the next level, and the first playtest is coming soon.
Kaiserpunk imagines an alternate version of the early to mid 20th-century. WW1 and WW2 are present, but the fates of the global powers are yet to be decided, and the future of the world remains malleable. From Overseer Games, creator of the much-loved Aquatico, Kaiserpunk begins as a city builder, as you rebuild, revitalize, and rearm your home nation, and build a modest, modern state. Cultivate crops, develop mass production, and maximize your profits as you research new technologies and set policies to keep your citizens happy and safe. Once the homefront is secured, that’s when Kaiserpunk transforms into something else entirely, a grand strategy game fueled by military might.
It’s not enough to perfect just one, reliable city state – in Kaiserpunk, there are more than 100 regions to invade and conquer, all based on real-world geography, and governed by AI opponents that reflect the game’s alternate history.
Battling across land, sea, and air, you can use artillery guns, tanks, steampunk-style zeppelins, and warships to gradually expand across the globe. Though details are few right now, Overseer explains that the choices you make – which regions you conquer, technologies your pursue, and buildings you construct – will be reflected in a dynamic narrative that responds to your decisions.
If you want to play Kaiserpunk for yourself, its first playtest will launch as part of Steam’s Summer Next Fest, which runs from Monday June 10 to Monday June 17. We’re still waiting on a full release date, but Kaiserpunk is provisionally slated to launch sometime in 2024. You can already wishlist it right here.
In the meantime, you can try some of the best city building games, or maybe the best 4X games available right now on PC.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.