Power The Grid Early Access

Our world is consuming a lot of power at any given moment, especially in countries where cities are big and full of people. Naturally, we learned how to scale up our power production facilities in order to keep up with demand, but there are still issues every now and again when the grid is way too busy to provide everyone with energy at the same time.

Power The Grid is a brilliant little game that allows you to see whether you’ve got what it takes to keep an entire town happy and provide it with just enough electricity to care for the environment at the same time. Although it may sound pretty straightforward, it actually takes a lot of practice and patience to learn how to predict power surges and how to counter them efficiently.

To begin with, you start with a simple dam and a couple of generators that can be turned on and off instantly. Hence, you can turn them off if the people are sleeping and not using much electricity, as well as run them at full capacity once the day kicks off. After that, each level adds more buildings and facilities to your town, which makes things that much more difficult.

Although you start with hydroelectric plants only, things get tougher to deal with later on. Hence, fossil fuels enter the equation as well, not to mention the alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar. However, they require a warmup period before the generators start producing anything, so it’s important that you anticipate the busy hours and turn them on before they are actually needed.

Unfortunately, there are very few levels to toy with, at least in this early access version. Thus, there’s no time to really get into the game, and it would be nice to see more cities and a few other options when it comes to energy conservation. Thankfully, the developer promises more levels soon, so at least we know that more content is on the way.

In the end, Power The Grid is certainly a breath of fresh air on the indie market, which is why it’s such a shame that it’s so short. Hence, the gameplay mechanics are great, and new levels can’t get here fast enough.