The Battle of Polytopia

The Battle of Polytopia is a 4X turn-based strategy game developed and published by Midjiwan AB. Players play as one of sixteen tribes to develop an empire and defeat opponents in a low poly square-shaped world. Players can play against bots or human opponents, local or online. The game was initially released in February 2016 and November 2016 in USA.

Gameplay
The Battle of Polytopia is a 4X turn-based strategy game with isometric graphics and a colorful, low poly art style. Each game is set in a procedurally generated square world made of tiles. After choosing one of sixteen tribes to play as, players start each game with a single city and one warrior. They can expand their territory by sending units to unexplored tiles, obscured by clouds; capturing unclaimed villages; and battling enemy tribes to take their cities.

Each city generates an in-game currency called stars for their tribe every turn. Players can use stars to train more units; harvest resources and create buildings on captured tiles; and research upgrades on the tech tree, enabling them to make new types of units and buildings and harvest different resources. Resource-harvesting and buildings level up cities' "population", which makes them generate more stars and be able to train more units.

There are three single-player game modes with AI enemies: Perfection, where the player aims for the highest score in 30 turns; Domination, where the goal is to destroy all other tribes as fast as possible; and Creative, an endless mode. Players can also face off against other players online.

While four of the tribes are free-of-charge, the rest require purchase. They each have different designs and biomes and start with different technologies.

History
The Battle of Polytopia began as the personal project of Felix Ekenstam, a Swedish freelancer who developed Flash games. Ekenstam started the one-man indie studio Midjiwan AB to work on the game. In 2023, he said that, starting out, "I wanted to create the kind of game that I would enjoy, that wasn’t already available anywhere else." Ekenstam envisioned Polytopia as a strategy game which adopted mobile games' "simplicity and accessibility" but not their "aggressive monetisation". He used Adobe Flash to create the game.

In February 2016, the game was first released on the App Store, titled Super Tribes. The first version only had the thirty-turn mode. In June 2016, the game's name was changed to The Battle of Polytopia due to trademark issues. The game was released on Android on December 1, 2016. Online multiplayer was added on February 15, 2018. A desktop version using Steam was released on August 4, 2020. The game was added as a feature to Tesla cars on December 25, 2020.

The game was released for Nintendo Switch in October 2022.

In 2020, a new version of the game called Moonrise was released. Moonrise uses the Unity game engine, while previous versions used Adobe AIR. Moonrise was released first on Steam with the desktop version's release on August 4, 2020 and then on mobile on November 23 the same year.

In 2023, the Path of the Ocean update was released. This update saw the addition of new naval units such as the Raft, Scout, and Bomber, as well as new buildings such as Bridges and Markets (a notable rework to the former Custom House).

Reception
In The Battle of Polytopia 's first year, reviewers thought the game was enjoyable despite its flaws.

Reviews for the mobile version of The Battle of Polytopia were positive. Chris Carter of TouchArcade gave the game 4.5 stars out of 5, calling it "a great city building game that's free of the shackles of 'freemium.'" The PC port of the game received "mixed reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic. In a review for Cubed3, Eric Ace gave the game a 6 out of 10 saying, "For some casual players it is a fun romp, but anyone looking for depth or longevity won't find it here."

Environmental initiatives
All revenues from sales of the game's "Zebasi" tribe on mobile are invested in loans for solar power projects in rural Africa with the Swedish company Trine. Over €150,000 has been invested since October 2021.

Midjiwan AB has donated to EARTHDAY.ORG's The Canopy Project in support of its reforestation efforts.