Powargrid Demo

The board game industry has exploded in the last few years, especially since many of them are designed as video games instead. However, the trend is kind of dying out lately, mainly because developers are running out of original ideas and the games are way too similar. Thankfully, some developers manage to stay creative and come up with entertaining concepts.

Powargrid is a turn-based strategy game with simple controls and tricky mechanics, in which your goal is to expand across the map using a power grid system. Naturally, you have to do all this while also defeating enemies that try to do the same, which obviously increases the challenge. However, the humorous story and the dialog in the cutscenes make the whole thing feel a lot more enjoyable than you might think at first.   The main idea is to destroy the enemy power plants while defending your own, while also expanding across the map and wisely managing your energy. Every type of structure you decide to build costs a certain amount of energy, and you have a limited quantity to use for every turn. Towers are important if you want to gain ground or destroy enemy structures, but they also come in handy if you want to defend against incoming attacks.

As mentioned before, the action takes place in turns, which means that you get plenty of time to think about your next moves. To make things even better, the developers integrated a very intuitive and helpful interface, since you can easily switch between structures, build them and end the current turn with only a couple of hotkeys. On a side note, the humor is spot on every time, and you can tell that most of the writing is top-notch.   The difficulty level is up there too, which means that you have to be patient and really put your brain to work to pass some of the stages. It’s also worth noting that the AI is always prepared to take advantage of your mistakes, not to mention the fact that its strategy is solid most of the time anyway. Lastly, the graphics are nothing to write home about, but the textures are clean and most of the maps look different, which is great news.

All things considered, Powargrid is a breath of fresh air in the genre, and it also features great humor, a fine-tuned interface and a challenging difficulty curve that keeps you on edge from start to finish. Hence, it’s definitely worth a try if you are a fan of turn-based strategy games.