Tideborn Empire

Tideborn Empire is a slower strategy game about managing a chain of floating settlements. You balance food, trade routes, and defense while the map shifts around you as storms redraw the waters. It rewards planning several turns ahead.

What kept us hooked was the diplomacy. Rival factions remember how you treated them, and a betrayal early on came back to bite us hours later. There's no rush timer, so you can genuinely sit and think.

It's not the flashiest game around, and the tutorial could explain resource chains better. Push through the first hour, though, and it opens into something genuinely clever.

What we liked

• Long-term planning that pays off
• Factions with real memory
• Relaxed, no-timer pacing