City Takeover

Genre: Real-Time Strategy

Players: 1

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Review:

City Takeover, released on mobile devices in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024, is a bit of an odd game, and one that’s difficult to fully categorize. I could see it being called a Puzzle game or an Arcade-style game, maybe even a Board Game, but probably the best descriptor for this is Real-Time Strategy. However, this game definitely doesn’t play like a typical Real-Time Strategy game.

The main idea behind the gameplay is that in each of the game’s levels, you control one or more buildings by default, with these buildings highlighted in blue. On its own, a building owned by you or an AI-controlled opponent will slowly grow its number until it reaches a maximum capacity of 64, but you can choose instead to draw a line between your building and another one it can see by line of sight, with players being able to draw up to three of these lines per building depending on how full that building is.

If the connected building is another one of your own buildings, the source building will send soldiers to feed its growth to the connected building instead, until that building reaches maximum capacity resulting in the added growth passing through the connected building to the next one it’s connected to along with the soldiers from the connected building, effectively doubling the strength of that line.

However, if the connected building is not one you own, but is instead a neutral building or an opponent’s building, you’ll slowly whittle its number down until you capture it, unless the opponent draws the same line coming from the other side, in which case it will ultimately come down to which side is sending more soldiers. As such, much of the strategy here is determining which buildings to grow, which ones to capture, and what direction to have your troops flowing for the best results.

City Takeover plays with this strategy by presenting different situations. Some involve walls that cut off your ability to connect buildings, some involve specialty buildings that are more effective at supporting your own buildings or more effective at attacking opponents, and some involve multiple opponents that you must guard against and possibly play off each other to claim victory.

If all of that seems a bit confusing… yeah, I suppose it can be at times, but the way the game presents it is mostly pretty simple – draw lines from buildings you control to other buildings you control in order to build up your strength, and draw lines to buildings you don’t control to capture them. It’s accessible enough to be “easy to learn”, but hides enough complexity to be “tough to master”, which is what you want out of a good Strategy game.

When it comes to problems, my main issues here are clarity, control, and features. Clarity is a problem because the crisscrossing lines of support and attack can be difficult to parse at times, especially when one building is directly behind another, hiding the connecting lines due to the stationary camera. Control is an issue mainly for players using a gamepad, as selecting the specific building you want can sometimes be awkward and difficult, though this is not an issue if you’re playing using the touchscreen in portable mode. Finally, my issue with the features is that this game seems like it has a lot of great potential for multiplayer play, but the game features absolutely no multiplayer whatsoever, making for a huge missed opportunity.

I suppose the presentation also leaves something to be desired. The game’s simple 3D visuals are colorful and generally easy to understand, but look a bit bland and have an aesthetic that makes this game’s mobile roots clear. And this is backed by a relaxed soundtrack that just doesn’t fit the frenzied, combative nature of this game.

Still, despite its flaws, City Takeover is a fun and surprisingly unique Real-Time Strategy game that’s fun and presents players with gameplay that’s easy enough to pick up, but has some surprising nuance hidden in that seemingly simple gameplay. And while I think there are definitely areas where this game could be improved, the small $5 price tag makes it easy to forgive those issues. Fans of Strategy games willing to try something a little different should give this one a look.

tl;dr – City Takeover is an odd game that probably fits best in the Real-Time Strategy genre, though it doesn’t really play like most other games in the genre, with players connecting buildings they own to their own buildings to grow their size, or to other buildings to attack and capture them. This game isn’t without its issues, but the gameplay is enjoyable and pretty original, and the $5 price tag makes it easy to overlook the flaws.

Grade: B

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