Demo Review: Critias Empire

Let me start this review off on the right foot: the elevator pitch for Critias Empire is essentially Civilization stripped back to just the empire-building, but instead of fighting other (human) empires you're building under the omnipresent wrath of the (Greek) gods. Just a handful of turns into my first play-through my starting village of Atlantis – yes, yes – sank beneath the sea, along with all but one of my farms and mines.

Was it frustrating? Yes. Was it awesome? Also, yes.

I've been a huge nerd for Greek mythology since around the 5th grade, and so I was completely on board with the idea of a 4X-like game where you build the civilization of Atlantis. It's true that there's a lot missing from Critias Empire that would be nice to have; decades (oh my god!) of playing Civ have me with certain expectations about how ancient-empire 4X games should play. On the other hand, Critias Empire is made by one person versus the ~200 folks at Firaxis. On the downside that one person isn't Sid Meier, but hey, nor are they Peter Molyneux. And regardless, Critias Empire is an impressive vision of a super interesting idea.

And that's a precious thing! It's rare to see a 4X with a truly new idea, but I'd say this delivers. Arguably Alpha Centauri did the whole you-versus-the-planet thing, but that was more of a plot device than a what-the-hell-where-did-my-mountains-go adversary.

(And yes, I remember the adversarial terraforming in Alpha Centauri, but let's not get distracted here. Remember, each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries.)

The other big idea here is the total lack of combat. "But I like combat!" you say? The big idea here is that your civilization doesn't lack for struggle, just that there isn't a (human) opponent you can go to war with and defeat. The struggle in Critias Empire is the fight just to survive a hostile world, characterized in the game as the whims of angry gods as they randomly invoke disasters that destroy your plans and force you to react. Sometimes those disasters are disastrous – I confess that I quit and restarted my playthrough after losing all I'd built to the sea – but at the same time they felt strangely human. Critias Empire uses a 4X brush to paint a picture of antiquity as a fight for our very existence between mankind and nature; can we build anything, advance anywhere, with such relentless and faceless opposition?

And wow if that's not a metaphor for indie game dev in 2025 I don't know what is.

Critias Empire has a free demo on Steam at the time of this writing, with a slated release that reading between the lines is probably summer 2025. I'll definitely be watching this one from now until release day, and I'd suggest you do the same.