Powerplay Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Maybe
A Command & Conquer-style RTS with light Factorio belts, stealth bombers that delete your own army on the first drop, an
My stealth bombers dropped their first payload and wiped out my entire army. Twenty minutes of building tanks, gone. Then I realised nothing in the game could actually shoot those stealth bombers, so I sent them to destroy the enemy base on their own and complete the mission anyway. That is the current state of Powerplay's balance, and it was also the most fun I had with it.
Powerplay is a Command & Conquer-inspired RTS with Factorio-light supply chains from Frantic. You build a base, extract resources, run them through production on conveyor belts, and build a military force to complete objectives. My verdict is Maybe.
Powerplay is a maybe if you want old-school RTS vibes with a touch of factory logistics, and you can tolerate downtime between decisions. Try the demo for the bomber comedy and the belt loop, but expect to wait. A speed-up toggle would flip this to Play for me. Wishlist it if Frantic balances anti-air into enemy bases and keeps patching pathfinding before the 2026 release.
Pros
- Command & Conquer nostalgia lands for old-school RTS fans
- Conveyor-to-forge supply loop is easy to grasp in the demo
- Stealth bomber meltdown is broken, but genuinely entertaining to watch
- Frantic shipped many post-demo patches, including pathfinding fixes
- Unit variety exists if balance eventually forces more than bombers
Cons
- No speed-up option turns long resource waits into irl chores time
- Stealth bombers trivialise missions when enemies lack anti-air
- Friendly fire can delete your own army and sometimes the bombers themselves
- Tank pathfinding gets stuck on trees and buildings
- Light supply chains in the demo rarely reward optimisation
Belts, forges, and classic RTS bones
The setup is familiar. Mine ore, send it to a forge via conveyor belt, turn ore into steel, feed steel into tanks, planes, and everything else you need. The Simulation layer is light enough in the demo that you do not need to optimise much. One mine can supply two or three forges, and they produce at the same rate regardless of conveyor length once they are running.
Factorio depth might show up on later maps when supply lines stretch. In the demo it mostly means waiting. Three missions: the first two pitch you against an enemy base you must destroy, the third is wave defense. I started with tanks, got comfortable, then spotted an airfield and built stealth bombers for air support.
Bombers, friendly fire, and broken balance
That is when friendly fire happened. Bombers circling their targets sometimes arc back through their own blast radius and kill themselves, which is both a design problem and extremely funny to watch.
After discovering the bombers were completely untouchable by any enemy I had, I stopped using tanks entirely. The wave-defense mission became one stealth bomber at each entrance. Done. Easy. Anti-air turrets exist in the game, but the enemy did not field them in the demo. Putting them in the enemy arsenal before full release should force a different Strategy than bomber spam.
Pathfinding is a known issue. Tanks get stuck behind trees and buildings, so you guide them manually or wait. Frantic has been actively patching since the demo launch, eighteen updates and counting, with pathfinding specifically on the list. That is a good sign.
Waiting is the real boss
The biggest problem is not the bombers or the pathfinding. It is the waiting. I played for a hundred and ten minutes, and maybe thirty of those were actual gameplay. The rest was watching resources accumulate while I sorted my daughter's breakfast, came back, did chores, and came back again. That is not how an RTS should be played.
A speed-up option would turn this into a Play for me. Without it, it sits as a Maybe. If you grew up with Command & Conquer, Powerplay will scratch that itch, and Frantic are clearly listening to feedback. Just make sure you have something else to do while the steel builds up.
There were no Steam reviews yet at the time I played, with full release planned for 2026 but no date confirmed.
Developer: Frantic
View on Steam
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Strategy, Simulation, Indie, Base Builder, City Builder, Colony Sim, Exploration
Related Reviews
- Feudal Craft: a medieval colony sim that almost lost me in the first hour and then took my second. the peasants are the problem.
- Goblins of Elderstone: A goblin tribe city builder with burrow tunnels worth building and skeleton raids you can mostly ignore. I am glad I tri
- Mycelium Conquest: Alien mushroom automation with a distinctive organic look, but the demo completes on a basic node web while production b
- BEACONFALL: BEACONFALL clicked once I learned the villager controls: build a lighthouse settlement, automate the economy, then watch
- Blighthold: A Lovecraftian dieselpunk city builder with strong art and Frostpunk-ish pressure on a flat 2D strip, but the demo fough
- Stamperor! The Jester's Decree: A goblin jester stamp-em-up where running out of accept stamps is how you accidentally donate thirty-two villagers to ba
Browse all Steam demo reviews