Originally 50 Years was meant to be an easy achievement and quick completion game for me, but then I fell in love with its simplicity, and I’ve replayed it hundreds of times since.
50 Years is a fast-paced, turn-based strategy game where you have fifty years (turns) to build up your defense and lead your troops to ultimate victory! All this while trying to balance the income (gold) generated by peasants, recruiting more units, upgrading buildings to house more units, purchasing new buildings and locations for stronger units, and ensuring there is enough food for everyone.
Battles are automated, and apart from being able to control your balance of several types of units such as swordsmen, knights, minotaurs, you have no control over where units are placed. The unit movements and patterns are the same throughout; Although replays will follow the same basic concept, playing around with a different build, buffs and culture will result in a completely different outcome.
The art style is very basic with no difference between the various cultures and the soundtrack does become a little bit repetitive, but the game kept me so focused that it was barely something I noticed – and settings allow for these to be turned off too. The only two downfalls, in my opinion, are the lack of a tutorial to start with, although each selection offers enough details before selecting it, the game is still easy to figure out. Then the cursor is also something I needed to get used to as it rolls over the screen and feels far slower than most point and click adventure games I’ve played.
Apart from the main game mode, there’s also a special game mode selection offering eight different scenarios, some restricting the types of units and others the number of units. With five difficulty levels, ten cultures to choose from, building and belief buffs; 50 Years offers replayability that not a lot of budget-friendly quick completion games offer.
50 Years is the perfect game to play if you only have a few minutes, but be warned, the desire to achieve a fifty-year victory could have you replaying for hours on end!
At the time of writing 50 Years offers a total of 5,000 gamerscore points easily unlockable with only a few playthroughs. 50 Years was released in November 2020 by publishers Xitilon.
50 Years is available now on Xbox and PC.