Mobile Review: SuperTribes

Name: SuperTribes

Platform(s): iOS

Developer/Publisher: Midjiwan AB

Price: Free ($0.99)

In the year 2309, mankind has for the past 100 years endeavored in human expirimentation trying desperately to accelerate the human evolutionary process. The result is that every human has mutated, now posessing super human powers. A cival war has broke out causing 100's of Superhuman Tribes to begin to brutally kill each other. You have acended as the leader of one of these "SuperTribes" now you must lead you're tribe to victory or rather survival. 

Sadly, SuperTribes has nothing to do with that premise. I don't really know what makes this game Super... Maybe it has to do with the fact Tribes is already a trademarked game, so they just slapped a super in front. However don't fret, despite SuperTribes not having my super awesome premise, it's still pretty fun.

The best way to describe SuperTribes is a simpler version of Civilization, dumbed down for quick play sessions. The average game of SuperTribes is between 5-10 minutes. Where as a game of Civilization can take hours. 

SuperTribes is a turn based strategy game. SuperTribes uses a square based grid with 8 directional movement, meaning you can move your troops diagionally In addition to the native directions (up,down,left,right). I feel an octogon based grid would have been a better representation over the square grid, but I suppose I'm being nitpicky. 

Each turn the player is allotted a certain number of resources. These resources may be used for many things. Purchasing upgrades(technology), troops or gathering supplies(food, wood, etc) to increase your population. As your population grows you will be able to gain perks for your cities. These perks range from increasing resources, to city land size, to getting a giant warrior of doom. Citizens basically work like exp and everytime your city levels up you'll get a perk. However you'll also need to use those resources to develop troops as well, so you'll need to find a balance between getting population, upgrading your technologies and buying troops. You NEED to buy troops. Sadly there is no diplomacy like in Civ and no pacifist way of winning. At some point you'll need to defend your cities or try to take over other cities. Which is okay because the game is designed around that. Most of the final upgrades in technology end in some sort of new troop or weapon. 

In some ways it causes the game to lack any depth but at the same time, it's a mobile game and thus doesn't neccesarily require a whole lot of depth. Normally it would affect replayablity, but the game randomly generates maps and alot of the fun in the game is analyzing the starting situation and attempting to find the best course of action for your resources. Sometimes the map is difficult to win and others your set up to win. It creates a nice rollecoaster effect making for a decent amount of variety. 

The business is quite far in that it essentally offers one DLC tribe for $1. At the start of each game you may choose your tribe( romans, ninjas, barbarians,etc) and those tribes each start off with a different technology(fishing, hunting, etc). The paid tribe's technology has no advantage over the others. Especially when you consider how the maps are random and you have no way of knowing whether that technology will be useful to you or not. I had a game where I chose the plant picking tribe but was spawned into a map where I was surrounded by fish. So really you're just paying for a bit more variety. 

Overall, SuperTribes is a pretty fun mobile game. While it lacks the depth of Civilization, it does provide a quick and fun mobile experience with a more than fair buisness model.

Score: a square grid/ an octagon.  (this is a game where I'm particularly glad I don't actually give scores becuase this one would be hard to score for me :D)

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