Iron Dominion

Iron Dominion asks you to build up a settlement while fending off waves of rivals, and it does the classic strategy dance well. You're always short on something, and figuring out whether to expand or fortify is a genuinely tense decision.

The real-time battles are readable on a small screen, which isn't a given for the genre. Units have clear roles and countering an enemy composition feels smart rather than lucky. There's an optional slower campaign mode I preferred over the skirmishes.

It leans a little on repetition once you've seen the main maps, but the systems are solid enough that I kept tweaking my strategies for weeks.

What we liked

• Tense resource decisions
• Readable real-time battles
• Solid campaign mode