Best New Apps: ‘Rymdkapsel’

Rymdkapsel looks simple and plays slow, but it’s one of the best strategy games I’ve played in a long time. The game is all about expansion. Your team of tiny white squares starts out on a small platform floating in space, and the goal is to expand that platform as far as possible. You’ll need to produce resources like food and minerals, add new members to your crew, examine mysterious artifacts to gain new abilities, and build defenses to protect against regularly scheduled alien attacks. There’s also a puzzle element — new additions to your budding space colony come in the shape of Tetris pieces, so it’s a challenge to come up with the ideal set-up for all of the different rooms. But most of the strategy comes from your ability to balance exploration with defense, while keeping an ever-vigilant eye on your resources.

Rymdkapsel was released earlier this year, but only on PlayStation Mobile, meaning you had to have a Vita or “PlayStation certified” Android device to play. Thankfully, it’s finally available to a much wider audience; today Rymdkapsel launches on both iOS and Android. It’s the same game, but it feels particularly great on a tablet like an iPad or Nexus 7, where the bigger screen makes it easier to manage your ever-growing empire. No matter what device you’re using, Rymdkapsel is worth playing to see just how long you can survive in the vast darkness of space.

Grab it for $3.99 on iOS or Android