Revival: Recolonization is an indie 4X game set in the robot-infested future of planet Earth. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Revival: Recolonization Review Overview
What is Revival: Recolonization?
Revival: Recolonization is an indie 4X game with a unique narrative and a distinct techno-tribal feel. Play as Tania Olazzar as you venture through the post-apocalyptic dregs of a ravaged earth. Form tribes, rebuild settlements, and combat the machines as you reclaim what’s left of humanity and recolonize a world that was once yours.
Revival: Recolonization features:
⚫︎ Turn-based tactical combat on a hex grid
⚫︎ Quick and easy tech research
⚫︎ Powerful global effects and terraforming abilities
⚫︎ Fully narrated story cutscenes
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Revival: Recolonization's gameplay and story.
 Steam |
$23.99 |
Revival: Recolonization Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Fun and Interactive Tutorial Fresh Take on the 4X Formula |
Looks Cheaper Than it Actually Is Lacking That 4X Essence |
Revival: Recolonization Overall Score - 68/100
Revival: Recolonization spells the end of civilization … human civilization, not the Sid Meier game. Against that, this game simply cannot compare. Although its unique narrative and fun premise give it a cybernetic leg up, the flat gameplay and unsightly UI leave much to be desired. I would usually excuse these shortcomings for a game in early access, but certainly not for a 1.0 release.
Revival: Recolonization Story - 8/10
Revival: Recolonization is getting a lot of mileage from its unique premise and for good reason. For too long has the 4X genre been a history simulator, as seen with the likes of Sid Meier’s Civilization series and Paradox’s Millennia. Revival: Recolonization dared to be different, using the Terminator-adjacent post-apocalyptic future as a canvas for its darkly comedic world-building and techno-tribal cultures.
Revival: Recolonization Gameplay - 6/10
Revival: Recolonization, while technically a 4X game, lacks the synergistic polish that the genre is known for. Every game is a constant back-and-forth between mechanics that only seem tangentially related and at no point does it ever feel like you’re "popping off". The tactical hex-based combat layer is a nice touch, however.
Revival: Recolonization Visuals - 7/10
Revival: Recolonization’s visuals are surprisingly well-made and pair incredibly well with the specific atmosphere its narrative fosters. The numerous cutscenes don’t interrupt the game’s flow and the 3D assets are distinct enough to pop on the overworld. Unfortunately, the game’s UI looks like it came from a beta build and the colors are a bit too vibrant to take the game’s premise seriously.
Revival: Recolonization Audio - 6/10
Revival: Recolonization has decent voice acting during the narrated cutscenes but pretty much nowhere else. That’s fine enough, although those scenes are far from being the only lines of dialogue available in-game, the rest just aren’t voiced over. The game’s music is nothing special either, rounding off its lackluster performance with its audio.
Revival: Recolonization Value for Money - 7/10
Despite its lack of polish, you can certainly do worse with indie 4X games than Revival: Recolonization. It performs well enough and could genuinely be fun at times, it just lacks the vision and flow of other 4X games. All in all, $24 is a mediocre price for a mediocre game.
Revival: Recolonization Review: Couldn’t Survive Judgement Day
Is that a Terminator reference in the title? Heck yeah, and for good reason. Revival: Recolonization is basically a game of Civilization VI set a hundred years after Skynet nuked the planet with a little bit of Horizon: Zero Dawn Thrown in there.
Unfortunately, this game isn’t half as fun as either of the games I used in that comparison. As you’ll come to realize through this review, Revival: Recolonization lacks the soul of a 4X game in the same way a robot lacks humanity. Let’s start with its finer points first and work our way down to its endoskeleton.
We’ll begin where the game excels: its story and premise. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think anyone could ever flip the script on a 4X game the way Revival: Recolonization did. The genre’s been shaken a few times with titles like Stellaris and Age of Wonders, but those deviated a lot from humanity through sheer scale and fantasy elements, respectively.
Revival: Recolonization kept its scope to Earth and its main inhabitants but still managed to shake things up by having it set in the post-apocalypse to a cybernetic war. The cohesive uniqueness and fathomable scale of this game’s setting make it easier to understand and allow the game’s narrative elements to pop against a background of things to do.
Story is usually a non-entity with 4X games, I’m glad that this one managed to carve out a narrative without making it feel forced or out of place. This is where the game’s accolades end, however, as it’s only downhill from here.
We’ll move on to the game’s mechanics, starting with its least offensive one: combat. Revival: Recolonization operates on a hex-based grid, similar to games like Civ VI and Age of Wonders 4. Unlike those two, however, combat isn’t just a matter of stepping on enemy hexes and hoping that you have enough stats to survive or outright dominate the fight. Combat in Revivial Recolonization is a game of chess with cybernetic enhancements.
Whenever you start a fight in this game, the field expands and all combatants are isolated in a designated area of hexes to duke it out. Here, positioning and range determine the outcome of the battle in a chess-like turn-based RPG setup. If you’ve played HUMANKIND, it’s very similar to that game’s combat system.
Powerful abilities and edicts from your leader—a special unit representing the player character—can terraform the battlefield inside and outside of a fight, though its implementation is far too limited. You can change the biome of a few hexes and deal some damage, maybe even throw a status effect here and there, but apart from that, there’s not much else you can do.
Moving on to the other aspects of 4X, let’s talk about expansion, exploitation, and exploration. I don’t know how this game managed to do it, but despite using the most basic mechanics that almost every 4X game has (i.e. production queues, builder units, districts), none of them fit together well enough to create an experience I’d consider fun.
I don’t mean to say that the mechanics themselves are bad—far from it, actually. I just think that this game lacks the synergistic polish or "flow" that 4X games are known for. You hop between menus and units far too often for any of it to be satisfying, making it feel like you can never " pop off".
This is far from Civ VI’s gameplay loop, where you can pop off as early as the Ancient Era if you play your cards right (or if you choose Sumeria). It has all the tedium of micromanagement without any payoff. This and its oddly glacial pace are what I think dragged this game into the proverbial vat of molten metal, only this time it ain’t giving a thumbs up.
The clunkiness likely lies in the game’s UI and the sheer amount of menus you need to click through to get anywhere. Other games solve this problem by implementing tooltips and nesting menus, but here, it just feels a tad too incongruous, like a hodgepodge of tangentially related mechanics pretending to be a cohesive system.
To add to that, the game just doesn’t look and sound right in certain aspects. The cutscenes and assets, both 3D and 2D, are completely fine—no need to change anything there. The boxy-as-heck UI certainly raises a few eyebrows but, again, maybe I’m just not getting it. The voice acting and music, however, are a different story.
The voice acting is decent. It could certainly be better, but it’s at least passable. My main problem with the game’s voice acting is its frequency. The game only uses it for the cinematics and nowhere else, even if that scene sorely needed it. The fact that there’s a wall of dialogue to read every few minutes with only the tribal background music to accompany it really tears into this game’s audio quality.
And that’s basically what Revival: Recolonization is: a great premise plagued by so-so mechanics and peripherals. I know I hyped it up to be something truly awful but, in a genre filled with juggernauts like Civ VI, Stellaris, and Age of Wonders, being mediocre is basically the same as being bad.
I truly believe that this game should have stayed in early access for a little bit longer because this is unbecoming for a 1.0 release. If and when the patches roll out and the developers manage to match the gameplay’s quality with the game’s visuals, just like a certain android from the future said, I’ll be back.
Pros of Revival: Recolonization
| Things Revival: Recolonization Got Right |
|---|
|
Fun and Interactive Tutorial Fresh Take on the 4X Formula |
Fun and Interactive Tutorial
Despite its mediocre gameplay, Revival: Recolonization actually has a great tutorial. Also serving as the game’s epilogue and the player’s main avenue for entry to the game’s expansive lore, the tutorial is a narrative experience that teaches the game’s main mechanics in a way that doesn’t seem forced.
Definitely better than chucking an encyclopedia at the player and hoping they have the attention span to read it.
Fresh Take on the 4X Formula
If all the Terminator jokes weren’t enough of an indication, I really enjoy how this game approached the 4X formula, especially in terms of narrative. Historical 4X games are not bad, they’re just nothing special anymore, not thematically. Sci-fi 4X games, while not quite a dime-a-dozen yet, aren’t that unique either. Now a cybernetic post-apocalypse, that’ll get my attention.
It’s not just the setting either, the main goal of the game is also different. The game isn’t just about surviving the apocalypse or being the best civilization anymore, it’s about uniting humanity and fighting back against the robot menace. It’s thematically refreshing, is what I mean to say.
Cons of Revival: Recolonization
| Things That Revival: Recolonization Can Improve |
|---|
|
Looks Cheaper Than it Actually Is Lacking That 4X Essence |
Looks Cheaper Than it Actually Is
I mean, the game is already pretty cheap at $24, but the boxy UI and overtly vibrant colors make it look even cheaper than that. I don’t expect AAA levels of polish, of course, but the way the designs fit together doesn’t really make the game look like its price, even if they are pretty darn good by their lonesome. Perhaps better art direction, general aesthetic cohesion, or just a better UI might help this game look better put together.
Lacking That 4X Essence
The smoothness of a 4X game is a hard thing to capture in theory, doubly so in practice. It’s about forming systems that flow well into one another, creating a web of synergistic smoothness that never makes you feel like you’re jumping around fulfilling errands. It’s one of the reasons that Civ VI plays so well and the "one more turn" syndrome sets in.
Revival: Recolonization does not have this smoothness about it. The clunky UI is one such culprit to this, yes, but the odd flowchart of things to remember just doesn't click well. I never feel like I want to take another turn whenever I choose to throw in the towel for the day. I don’t hate it enough to just stop playing, but it’s not much of a loss to do so.
Is Revival: Recolonization Worth It?
No, Not Right Now
Revival: Recolonization is cheap and you likely wouldn’t regret the $24 purchase outright, but you could be playing better games for far fewer bucks than that. Maybe if the game lowers its price further or musters up a better gameplay loop, but as it is now, I cannot say that this game is worth it. Hasta la vista for now, but there’s hope yet for Revival: Recolonization.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$23.99 |
Revival: Recolonization FAQ
Will Revival: Recolonization be Released on Consoles?
While a console port of Revival: Recolonization is possible, the game’s developer has confirmed that "there are currently no plans to do so".
Will Revival: Recolonization Have Mod Support?
According to the game’s developers, Revival: Recolonization will not be receiving mod support for players.
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Revival: Recolonization Product Information
 |
|
| Title | REVIVAL:RECOLONIZATION |
|---|---|
| Release Date | April 11, 2024 |
| Developer | HeroCraft PC |
| Publisher | HeroCraft PC |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Strategy, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Revival: Recolonization Website |
