Jupiter’s Folly is a (slow) real-time online board game developed by Iron Helmet Games. And I say slow because short games might last a week or so, while epic games may last months.
It is a perfect game for you to try if you don’t have much time on your hands. Things happen in real-time but events take a long time to unfold.
It’s one of those “login-twice-a-day-to-check-things” type of game but in this case without the stress of other similar games that force you to wake up at the middle of the night to check if nothing terrible has happened. In Jupiter’s Folly that should not happen.
Moving units across nodes in the map takes a long time (each move takes 8h). In addition you are only given new cards and money each 24h. And this applies to everybody else playing the same game.
It is an RTS but feels like a TBS
So in the end Jupiter’s Folley is a game of real-time strategy but at a slow pace, a tick-based RTS, which makes it almost like a turn-based game. It can actually be turned into a turn-based game if you go for the premium account, more on that ahead.
It is a real-time strategy game, no doubt about that, but after you’re done you can sit back, relax and wait for everybody else to finish. Then everybody will sit back and wait for a next round and so on. You can still do stuff like cancel orders.
I played the tutorial, which is very quick and nice by the way. That combined with a few minutes reading through the site and 30 min more exploring the game gave me a good overall picture of what the game is all about. I had fun, the UI is cool and usable but this is not a review so I will not enter into details (and I don’t have much more to say either with <1h of play anyway).
The game is really easy to play. Rules are simple and clear. In the farthest reaches of the galaxy you are looking for Crystal, the ultimate resource everybody wants. You build mines to extract Crystal but you have to counter hostile aliens and rival miners.
Each game has a Crystal quota. Meet it before everybody else and you win! :)
So basically you log-in once or twice a day to check point of status, build mines and command your armies.
It’s Multiplayer but it’s also Single-player
It is a multiplayer game where you should mind your own business but you should also keep an eye on other real players in order to trade and engage with them in diplomacy. The idea is to forge alliances if I understood correctly. You can play single-player games also.
If you play single-player you’re given the ability to do 4h boosts, so, you can play your games almost continuously. This means that you can play whole games in just a few hours.
JF is a card board game, so in the end your actions are dependent on the use of cards. There are cards to create armies, build mines, extract crystal from mines, increase your hand, and supposedly others I didn’t saw yet. There are also special cards and cards you can only lend to other players.
In terms of business model JF is freemium. So, it’s free to play, however to be able to create your own games, and to be able to unlock all the game features you need to subscribe a premium account.
The game is at open beta stage at the time of this preview.
Checkout the Jupiter’s Folley official site for more information, and to play :)
Let us know if you tried it and what were your impressions about it.
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