Kaiserpunk Review — A Mid-Tier Interwar

Kaiserpunk is a city-building grand strategy hybrid that originally stood out to me because of its unique setting. Growing up as a huge history nerd, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the concept of dieselpunk, historical sci-fi, and alternate history set around the interwar period of 1919–1935. I love the idea of a world where giant, clanking mechs and horrifying hyper-industrialization exist alongside that old-school military aesthetic, where uniforms still looked cool and had a focus on style over just practicality. It’s the kind of setting you see in Iron Harvest or its board game equivalent, Scythe, where soldiers might carry bolt-action rifles into battle alongside gigantic spider-tanks.

Unfortunately, though this is more of a me-specific issue, Kaiserpunk doesn’t completely scratch the itch for a setting like that I hoped it would. Grand strategy city builder? Yes. Alternate history interwar period? Certainly. Dieselpunk/historical sci-fi? Though some of the game’s art might suggest so, unfortunately, this Kaiserpunk is not.

While this certainly won’t disappoint other players as much as it disappointed me, Kaiserpunk is devoid of any of the sci-fi weirdness I’ve been looking for in the genre. Instead, it is technologically historical but not politically, diverging from the real-world politics of the time (something you certainly won’t see me complaining about).

Instead, Kaiserpunk follows a world ravaged by the end of the First World War, with every single nation-state falling apart. Weary bands of soldiers return home to rebuild, forming new city-states in the process. History tends to repeat itself, however, and as these cities grow larger alongside their demands, their leaders begin to look beyond their borders.

When it comes down to core gameplay, I think Kaiserpunk has a lot of great ideas that fall a bit short in their execution.

The city-building in Kaiserpunk is pretty good, if not the best I’ve ever seen. The grid-based building placement is nothing compared to the natural building and city growth of Manor Lords, though that is quite a high bar to reach. Instead, Kaiserpunk feels a lot like the Anno series, where you produce a series of supply chains to both satisfy the needs of your citizens and produce goods to fortify your economy and military, eventually expanding out to conquer the map around you.

These supply chains, in and of themselves, are pretty good, with a wealth of industry to be built in your cities on both the economic and military side of things. However, there feels like a strange lack of depth in the actual city-building side of these production chains. Civilians don’t complain when living near factories, there is no pollution, and social services are easily fulfilled by just placing down instantly built buildings where they need to go. In fact, the social side of the game feels way too easy to satisfy; civilians move in quickly, complain about little, and don’t need a whole lot of production to meet their demands.

This is clearly because Kaiserpunk wants you to focus on the grand strategy side of things, where your population is more of a vessel to produce military units to go out and invade other regions on the map. While a cool idea in theory, this is probably the aspect of the game that feels like it had the least amount of thought put into it.

The turn-based combat is boring, animated poorly, and often feels like it wasn’t worth the effort it took to build up those units. It isn’t great when the production side of your war game is more fun than the war itself. Since the game is already a city builder, I don’t see why we don’t simply fight these battles in real time on the maps themselves. Even the Tropico series had a more satisfying combat system than Kaiserpunk, which hypes itself up on its grand strategy elements.

While I love the ability to play anywhere on the map, the scale of the game feels a bit weird to me. The map itself is divided into incredibly large regions, and it isn’t until you realize that your city, which is struggling to get beyond a population of 1,200, has just conquered the entire Middle East that you realize Kaiserpunk’s map might not be the most amazingly put together.

The game puts a lot of emphasis on creating your own cultural identity as a new city-state, something that is reflected through several starting identities that both give you passive abilities and change the look of your vehicles, from British/American, Russian, or German historical models. It is, therefore, strange to me that every other unit and building in the game has more of a British/American style, with not even your town center looking different based on your cultural choice. I think having different models for different cultures would be amazing in Kaiserpunk, especially since the turn-based combat kind of takes away the fun of having differently styled vehicles anyway.

Reading this review, it’s going to sound like what I want from Kaiserpunk is a lot more than what it has to offer—changes made to mechanics, expansions on the mechanics I like, etc.—changes that require a lot of work for a game that’s already been published. That’s because I truly feel as though Kaiserpunk is more in an early access stage as it is and should not have been fully released. While the game’s ideas and identity are really cool, some more time in the oven could have made this game go from a mid-tier title to something incredible.

Kaiserpunk was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Kaiserpunk is available on Steam.