The Red Hot Chili Peppers once asked, “How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser?” Well, Kaiserpunk is a game that may or may not address that question. Kaiserpunk, developed and published by Overseer Games, is “a grand city builder blending production-focused city building with world conquest in an alternate 20th century world.” In Kaiserpunk, you’ll be expected to “[m]anage your city, grow industries, build a military, and defeat rivals to become the greatest empire.” Standard Backlog Busting rules mean I’ve got a maximum of two hours to get to grips with Kaiserpunk, so I’d best get to work.

In total honesty, Kaiserpunk didn’t make the best first impression on me. As soon as I started playing, I encountered what I think is a bug. I’m guessing there’s supposed to be a static image of some kind that serves as the background of the main menu, but what’s there instead is one of those screens you’d see when a TV channel is having technical difficulties. I have no idea what caused that, but I’m giving Overseer Games the benefit of the doubt and assuming it’s not intentional. Regardless, that kerfuffle makes the text on the main menu needlessly hard to read.

Despite that, I managed to make my way into Kaiserpunk’s tutorial. Once I’d gotten far enough into the tutorial to see the simultaneous depth and simplicity of Kaiserpunk’s core gameplay loop, I started getting very immersed. What I mean by “simultaneous depth and simplicity” is that Kaiserpunk’s core gameplay mechanics are complex enough to appeal to most veterans of the city-builder genre, and yet intuitive enough to avoid tripping up players like me who tend to suck at maintaining efficient logistics and road networks in games of this ilk. Kaiserpunk’s tutorial just about nails everything it sets out to do.

In spite of the reference to Germany in Kaiserpunk’s title, it appears as though you don’t play as any nation we would now think of as Germany within Kaiserpunk. The core gameplay loop is set in Europe, but your advisers have very American-sounding names. The voiceovers that accompany parts of Kaiserpunk are also narrated without so much as a hint of a German accent. The fact that the tutorial is text-heavy leads me to point out (once again) that Kaiserpunk has a few errors in its in-game text. Certainly nothing major, but my “grammatical eagle eye” noticed the occasional mistake.

Kaiserpunk is set in an alternate version of 20th-century Europe that has been thoroughly ravaged by the chaos of the Great War (i.e., World War I). Your job is twofold: You’ll need to rebuild your homeland so it’s better than it was before the war, and you’ll need to field a capable military to both defend your territory and engage in conquest. Kaiserpunk begins in the year 1919, so I genuinely feel rather bad that the people I lead have no idea that peace will probably only last for about twenty years before there’s an even greater Great War.

I can definitely see myself spending quite a lot of quality time with Kaiserpunk, but I think it still has some room for improvement. I’m sure I’ve hardly scratched the surface by playing it for the maximum of two hours allowed by standard Backlog Busting rules, but I intend to rectify that in the very near future. There are good reasons Kaiserpunk is sitting at “mixed” recent reviews on Steam. I’d suggest you keep that in mind and wait for a major sale if you want to check out Kaiserpunk, unless you happen to be an insatiable city-builder fanatic.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!