Taking London

A free love letter to browser-MMO empire building

Taking London revives the old Travian and Tribal Wars formula of persistent, city-building nation-warfare, wrapped in charming pixel graphics and a dash of British imperial satire, built and maintained by a single developer as a genuinely free-to-play release. Based on the available English-language review sample of 62 reviews — 52 positive, 10 negative, landing at an overall Very Positive rating — the most consistently praised feature across the sample, by a wide margin, is what the game deliberately doesn't include. "This game has been quite fun so far. No P2W elements at all. Not even an option to buy in game currency or items with money which is nice," one reviewer writes, and a separate reviewer situates that choice within its genre history directly: "Played a lot of tribal wars, ogame and travian back in the day, was looking for something similar but without the p2w. If you enjoyed those games but hated the p2w then this is the game for you."

A separate reviewer offers a specific, personal account of discovering the game that captures its underdog charm: "I am a Dull Man from Dull Men's Club. I saw the developers post, which was created by his wife and had to try the game. I can say after over 20 hours (lots of idle time), I really enjoy the game. It is a great game and fills the void for a cheap, idle base builder." Several reviewers specifically credit the solo developer's community presence as a real strength: "The community is helpful and active, the dev is responsive, friendly and constructive, and the game itself is just plain good fun," one reviewer writes, a sentiment echoed by a separate reviewer who simply notes, "One Dev (who doesn't sleep I don't think) and a nice little idler sort of game."

A serious, detailed account of favoritism and an unchecked exploit

Set against that goodwill, this review sample contains an unusually long, detailed, and specific negative account that deserves to be reported with real care rather than glossed over. One reviewer, writing their first-ever negative Steam review and stating that every quote in their account is sourced from screenshots, describes a top player gaining a dominant, permanent advantage through what they characterize as an unfixed exploit: "the goal of the game on this server is corrupted... Overlord (exploiting player) benefited from being first to find an exploit and doesn't blast people below him." This reviewer also describes the developer directly supplying a guildmate with large amounts of in-game currency, quoting that guildmate as saying the developer "wanted to see how easy it was for me to grow by draining the gold reserves of the NPC's in our alliance." The reviewer further describes specific bugs — mistargeted NPC attacks, misleading production timers, and a server update that erased hours of progress — compounding their frustration with what they felt was an inadequate developer response.

A separate, independent reviewer corroborates parts of the same underlying dynamic from a different angle, describing being personally named by the developer in the game's Discord in a dispute connected to the same dominant top player's rise, and describing the broader community friction that followed. Two independent, detailed accounts converging on the same specific top-player dominance issue and the same developer conduct is a meaningfully corroborated pattern rather than an isolated complaint, even though it clearly represents a minority experience relative to the sample's generally positive tone. A separate, shorter review confirms a related balance concern in blunter terms: "troop&combat balance is beyond bad, no end game." Readers weighing whether to invest time in a competitive, persistent server should go in aware that this game's specific, real-world community history includes this kind of serious dispute, even as the developer's broader reputation for responsiveness and anti-P2W ethics is separately well attested across many other reviews.

A rough, occasionally broken opening experience

Independent of the favoritism dispute, this sample also raises more conventional technical complaints. One reviewer describes a specific, hard tutorial-progression block: "The game hardlocked me in progression IN THE DAMN TUTORIAL, 15 minutes into the game. Next step requires 2 gold to complete, except I have no gold, and need to complete the tutorial to have a way to OBTAIN GOLD... And I can't start over as there is no reset option, and there is only one server for the game." A separate reviewer raises a distinct, specific complaint about the game's core time-management systems: "For a game that is based on visible timers it's shocking that none of the timers are accurate. If I start a 1 hour project at 7PM there's no excuses for it not being completed at 8PM" — a meaningful flaw in a genre where precise scheduling around real-world time is often the entire strategic hook.

What the developer's own update history shows

One reviewer specifically claims the project has been abandoned: "Dead game. Developer hasn't posted or done anything since august." That claim doesn't hold up against the developer's own public record: the game's Steam events feed shows a continuous run of dated, numbered patches running through 2025 and well into 2026, including a full "Osiris" server relaunch and remaster update as recently as August 2026, directly preceded and followed by multiple additional balance and bug-fix patches. Whatever the merits of the specific favoritism and balance complaints raised above, the claim that this particular developer stopped supporting the game is clearly contradicted by that record.

Where this leaves it

Taking London succeeds at reviving a genuinely beloved, largely extinct genre of browser-MMO empire building, anchored by a rare and consistently praised commitment to a fully pay-to-win-free model and a solo developer reviewers credit as active and engaged. Its most serious problem is a detailed, twice-corroborated account of unresolved top-player favoritism and an unfixed exploit that let one player dominate a server with no meaningful recourse for everyone else, alongside more ordinary complaints about tutorial softlocks and inaccurate timers. Recommended for nostalgic fans of old-school Travian-style strategy MMOs specifically looking for a free, ethically-monetized alternative to modern mobile clones, with the clear caveat that competitive server balance has, by credible account, broken down badly at least once in this game's history.