Technotopia

Its a puzzle game and not a city builder game. The main storyline can be finished in just a few hours, but the mechanics are simple enough that a player can pick it up pretty quickly. Decisions you make will have both an immediate effect and then a random consequence later on, so there is always some unpredictability

This game is such a treasure. I am glad I found it, now I can hardly stop playing. It has everything I like, puzzle, management, strategy, story, development. I can only recomend.

Technotopia is set in an alternate reality where economic models have been pushed to their extreme leading to the rise of four major factions controlling the city of Technotopia. With each faction competing with the rest for rival interests, the four heads decide to divest governance to a newly developed artificial intelligence, Iris. In a town rife with political unrest, Iris must try her best to please each faction, or risk being decommissioned. ​The meta-narrative around Technotopia focuses on Iris's attempts to retake control of the city from the four factions. After a few cycles of attempting to build up the city, it becomes clear that so long as the four factions can control Iris's code, they will intentionally sabotage her algorithms for their own personal gain. ​Iris's journey is not a solo-mission, as she's accompanied by her father, Architect, the genius inventor who developed Iris's code. Architect acts as an advisor, instructing Iris on how to navigate Technotopia's political climate. The story has four side narratives, each tied to a member of the faction. These side stories involve things like helping the upper class develop a new theatre, or aiding a high ranking politician to win an election. However, these "quests" are excuses for Iris to get close enough to each faction leader to install a virus into their systems, preventing them from being able to shut down her programming. ​While the writing did not leave me slack jawed in amazement, I found it to be a nice little narrative which leans into political intrigue and economic commentary. There are a few side characters who have little arcs which resolve themselves nicely, and the game is short enough that the story is not too spread out across an average playthrough. ​Technotopia is both a deckbuilder and city builder, which incentivizes the player balancing their resources. Iris starts the game with a simple deck of buildings in her deck of cards. Playing a card to construct a building consumes a turn, and there are ten turns in a round. At the end of each round, Iris needs to pay out the city upkeep expenses. Failing to pay out all the expenses at the end of the tenth round results in a game over, and initiates a new run. There are four resources, representing the influence among the four factions of Technotopia. Every building has a faction type, with yellow stores contributing to the business resource, while red factories contribute to the worker party. If buildings are placed in a certain configuration, Iris also gets a corresponding shape bonus. For example, a 2x2 square is a bonus for the worker party, so if Iris assembles a 2x2 square of factories she gets a big bonus of her red resource; however, she could also assemble a 2x2 square of yellow stores which would give her modest bonuses to both the business and worker resources. The ultimate goal of the game is to fully enclose four buildings spread out to the far diagonals of the map. Iris can also encounter random events, where she must chose how to resolve a conflict. Iris's choices have a wide range of effects like reducing the resource requirements at the end of the round, with repeated pandering to a specific party sometimes yielding large rewards later on. Technotopia's gameplay loop is compelling, with the constant dopamine hits from optimally filling out the grid being a compelling reason to play through till the credits roll. ​ I would recommend Technotopia as a roguelite. I appreciated that it was not a painful grind to reach the credits, and that the win conditions were clearly laid out. The game offers a lot of ways to mitigate bad RNG, and I liked that it had a story to accompany the gameplay. It's not quite a roguelite utopia, but the developers built a fun game on the foundation of a solid gameplay loop.