Utopia

Utopia is among the early building strategy games in which the player manages a colony on a distant planet divided into two simultaneously developing hemispheres and tries to develop it faster and more efficiently than the opponent's settlement on the opposite side of the map. The game runs in real time with regularly recurring rounds, during which the player builds farms, factories, power plants, and residential blocks, deals with the satisfaction of the inhabitants, and must face unexpected events such as natural disasters or technical malfunctions that can noticeably slow down the colony's development.

Unlike later, more elaborate building games, Utopia offers a fairly straightforward but addictive cycle of planning and waiting for results, where success is measured primarily by the relative lead over the opponent's colony shown on the opposite side of the screen, turning the game into a quiet but persistent race for prosperity. On the Amiga, the game benefited from clean isometric graphics and a clear interface that allowed quick orientation within a growing complex of buildings, even though the menu controls were somewhat austere. The player could also track the progress of the opponent's colony in overviews, which kept the tension alive even during calmer phases of the game.

Calm electronic music complements the meditative pace of colony management well and doesn't let the player forget that even calm building can be tense. Utopia was received at release as an interesting, if not groundbreaking, contribution to the emerging genre of building simulations, influenced by SimCity but with its own emphasis on direct competition between two colonies. Today the game is more of a historical curiosity, interesting as one of the early steps toward later elaborate city builders and strategy games with a competitive element that only returned to the genre many years later in the form of various online city builders based precisely on competition between players.

Why play it: For players interested in the roots of the city-builder genre, this calm yet tense colony management is an interesting historical stop, even though today it is more of a curiosity than a must-play title.