New Frostpunk 2 and Crusader Kings rival looks fantastic, but it's just been pushed back to 2025
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You see an upcoming game, it looks fantastic, you can’t wait for it to land, but then it suddenly gets delayed. Obviously you get a little disappointed, but all told, this is normally a good thing – if a developer wants more time to make something really sing, it’s going to be worth the wait. Frostpunk 2 is almost here. Civilization 7 is bringing up the rear. But somewhere in between there’s Kaiserpunk, a city builder and grand strategy game set in an alternative version of the 20th century. We’ve been looking forward to this one for a while, and while it’s unfortunate that it’s just been delayed, into 2025 no less, it’s not without good reason.
Giant machines, steam power, and noisy, smoky factories – Kaiserpunk imagines an exaggerated version of the Industrial Revolution that’s bled deep into the 20th century. A grand strategy and city-building game, it mixes the micro with the macro. In the opening stages, you’re the simple mayor of a burgeoning metropolis, and your job is to build housing, amenities, and efficient production lines to maximize both citizen happiness and productivity. From there, however, Kaiserpunk expands outwards. There are more than 100 regions surrounding your first city, and using a combination of diplomacy, trade, and warfare, your goal is to eventually absorb them all into your empire.
At one level, it’s a game of automation and economics, blending elements of Satisactory and Europa Universalis. At another, it’s a military strategy game where you capture territory using sword blades and boot heels. Developed by the ten-person team at Overseer Games, Kaiserpunk has already been wishlisted on Steam more than 130,000 times. Its release date however has just been pushed back.
The new Kaiserpunk release date is set for Thursday February 27, 2025. Lead designer Danijel Mihokovic says the extra time will allow Overseer to deepen Kaiserpunk’s core systems, add more detail to trading, and design a greater number of biomes. The objective is to have a complete version ready to go on launch day, rather than releasing Kaiserpunk into Steam Early Access.
“We’ve made the tough call to delay the release, but we believe it’s the right choice,” Mihokovic says. “Entering Early Access was considered, but ultimately, we felt that it wouldn’t do justice to the full vision of Kaiserpunk. We’re not against Early Access in principle, but for a game like Kaiserpunk, we believe it’s crucial for players to experience the entire journey in the best possible light.”
If you want to wishlist Kaiserpunk, just head right here.
Otherwise, you might want to try some other grand strategy games, or maybe the best 4X games available on PC.
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