Tideholm Dominion

Tideholm Dominion asks you to raise a string of island settlements against rising seas and rival traders. It's a slow-burn strategy game, the kind where you lose an hour arranging supply routes and barely notice.

The clever bit is the tide system. The map floods and recedes on a cycle, so land you planned around disappears and routes you ignored open up. It forces you to think several turns out, and the AI opponents exploit it well. Touch controls are smartly done — pinch to zoom, long-press for the full tile menu.

It leans hard into reading numbers and tooltips, so it's not a pick-up-and-play title. But if you like management games that actually make you think, this one respects your brain.

What we liked

• A tide mechanic that reshapes the map
• Smart touch controls for a dense genre
• Rewards long-term planning