Cliff Empire
Message for survivors on the Earth's orbit! After a nuclear war life on the surface became impossible. A 300m thick radioactive fog covered the Earth. Our scientists in the past decade predicted such course of events and used all available potential to build cliffs in the mountain region to restore life on Earth. We are looking for bold active people to manage the process of restoring life on Earth. Join! - develop in parallel the economics of several independent cities - trade between your cities and the orbital station - a dynamic climate change that will test the strength of your cities' economies. - choose between ecological and harmful power supply - 48 additional university researches to improve the city structure - over 120 structures for constructing the city - 15 goods for trade and consumption - possibility of switching between the 3D and the orthographic camera, as well as a free camera for walking around the city. - additional 15 quests that open access to orbital station and huge location in lategame - sandbox mode - tower defense more The compact gameplay involves the construction of three small cities in each randomly generated level.
Game Discussion
Steam User 23
Interesting challenge concept - moderate game delivery experience. Cliff Empire is a neat city building experience. How long will that neatness last will depend on the player. Will recommend purchasing this game on sale, but very carefully depending on what you're looking for.
Cliff Empire's gameplay is pretty solid and straight forward for a city building game. Camera controls are simple, intuitive, and provide the player the best view possible to build. This is quite important to the game as the player will soon be able to build not only on flat land, but on cliff edges and walls. The game provides a small tutorial to provide the player with the basics of the game. The tutorial is actually useful and provides further details if the player requires. After the tutorial it seems the brunt of the game begins, which is essentially challenge after challenge. I've started a few new games and it seems the challenges are a little randomized, and even come with a small cut-scene to introduce the potential problem. Some challenges include selling a certain amount of material, surviving droughts, surviving no wind conditions (meaning no turbine power), and some neat and not-so-neat challenges. The game's difficulty can be altered before starting a map, and another interesting note, players can actually delay certain tutorials and build up their city to better prepare for the challenges.
Upon choosing a difficulty and entering the game the player has the opportunity to choose the map. Map sizes are slightly random, but have default layouts in which the player can adjust or choose accordingly depending on the land shape they want. Once in the game the player starts an empire by placing a storage building. Buildings come in different sizes: some squares, some small rectangles, some larger rectangles, and some small squares. Basic building options include power (solar, wind, nuclear), nutrition (food, water, nutritional supplements), housing, entertainment, utility buildings (such as airports, transport, and maintenance), and a few others to choose from as the player completes challenges to gain medals. The obvious challenge here is to provide for citizens while being efficient with the amount of space available to build on.
The visuals and graphics are pretty good for what the game sets out to achieve. It sort of follows a dull grayscale colour scheme, but adds little hints of colours to keep the boring completely out. Animations are more or less all there, minor ones such as watching the drones drop items off or pick them up is not completely visible. They do land, but beyond that nothing else. Wind and other effects are apparent in addition to minor animations from buildings (whether its lights or some sort of motion or movement). The user interface I felt was well done and provides the player with quick and easy to access information. The sounds and music are quite chill. The narrators voice is suitable to the game's atmosphere, but can get a little annoying repeating the same things over and over again, especially when situations or events occur back to back. The music is really nice and doesn't annoy as much as the sounds do. This domain was addressed, but nothing over the top and nothing really missing.
Overall, I will recommend this game but with a caution. The first caution is buying this on sale, personally the sticker price I don't think its worth it. Second caution is the limited gameplay loop; some players will find a challenge in how Cliff Empire sets up its game while others may find it monotonous. I enjoyed the game for the time I played. I most likely will not be coming back as a regular, but can see myself popping in once in a while... maybe. This is why I caution 🙂.
RATING: 7.0/10
Gameplay
C+
Story / Campaign
C+
Visuals / User Interface
B-
Sounds / Music
C+
Replay-ability
C+
Overall
C+
Steam User 19
Nice little aesthetically pleasing futuristic city game from a dedicated dev that kept updating it throughout the years, great bang for your buck!
Steam User 14
Great concept, fun world, solid base builder at first but turns into an incredibly dull grind.
For about the first 15 hours this game was super fun. Building up cities on limited land made decisions for building choice, placement, and research very impactful. The game moved along quickly with constant new challenges and progression.
After that the game shifted into mega-project mode. My cities were stable so it came down to watching TV or browsing websites while waiting for the resources to trickle in for the various mega-projects. There was no more challenge, no way to speed up progress, and new things to do came along rarely.
Overall it's an OK game but if the game's pace had been the same from start to finish I would have called it a great game.
Only get this one if you really like the aesthetic or maybe if you want something to play while binge-ing some shows. And if you start feeling bored with it walk away, it doesn't get better.
Steam User 6
It's such a bloody good game. The setting is grim, and it starts off hard. Eventually it expands to a more hopeful setting as you do better and better.
Steam User 6
Love the game. It has a dystopian setting, with a utopian aesthetic, and the result is stunning.
The only issue I have is the recent update to add exclaimation marks over buildings not receiving resources. For me, at least, it has a bit of an eyesore effect when trying to view and appreciate my city (I build in sandbox mode, white plains.) I would love to have the ability to turn this off in the options menu. The same goes for the priority display, which is insanely useful, but can feel like it's interrupting the experience when just trying to look at my creation for what it is. Would like to be able to turn the display on and off as needed.
Steam User 3
Such a brilliant game.
There are constant updates bringing more and more features and it's been really cool to see the game evolve over the last few years.
Any problems that crop up are fixed promptly!
Please buy if you enjoy city building and management with a futuristic theme!
Steam User 4
great game , i love it
its not full of details like sim city but its not as hard as that too or realistic , a mix of future and some stuff
the look is great , the challenge is there , after 10 hours of playing a game u just start to actually play it , i mean the challenge begins and then u gonna make things work