TOHOTOPIA Review

Battle of Polytopia, Reskinned With the Cast of Touhou Project

TOHOTOPIA's pitch is almost embarrassingly simple to state and, going by 781 Steam reviews at a 97% positive rate, extremely effective in practice: take the low-poly, bite-sized 4X formula popularized by Battle of Polytopia, layer in Civilization-style culture and diplomacy systems, and reskin the whole thing with the cast of Touhou Project — Gensokyo's sprawling roster of gun-witches, vampire lords, and lunar exiles, reimagined as rival empires led by "Pharaoh" Remilia, "Emperor" Kaguya, "Great" Kanako, and "Philosopher King" Miko. Two-person developer Remilia Command launched the Early Access build on May 14, 2026, priced at just $3.99, and the reception has been close to uniform: reviewers repeatedly describe themselves as suckers for anything with Touhou branding, and just as repeatedly admit the game would earn their recommendation even without it.

Several reviews are candid about the derivative foundation in a way that reads as affectionate rather than damning. "I don't appreciate seeing devs rip off other games and then selling it, but you made it Touhou so it's chill," reads one, echoed by dozens of others describing it as "basically Polytopia but with Touhou characters" or "a Touhou skin mod for a different game." That's a fair description of the skeleton — square-grid movement, fog-of-war exploration, city-founding, and a tech tree will all feel instantly familiar to anyone who's played Polytopia or its imitators — but it undersells what TOHOTOPIA actually adds on top, which is enough that a meaningful number of reviewers who came in skeptical ended up recommending it purely on the strength of the systems layered over the reskin.

Heroes, Culture, and Faction Identity Do the Real Work

The addition reviewers cite most consistently as elevating TOHOTOPIA above a straight clone is its hero system: each of the four currently playable factions comes with a roster of named Touhou characters who function as powerful, upgradeable individual units with faction-specific abilities, layered on top of a second resource — Culture — that unlocks new heroes and buildings independent of the gold economy. One reviewer who'd logged 150 hours on the pre-release demo alone put it directly: "it is still polytopia in its core. Its been changed too much to be the same game." Faction identity goes beyond cosmetic reskinning too — the Scarlet Devil Mansion empire spreads a debilitating red mist, Eientei's Kaguya empire can summon rabbit hordes and grow bamboo forests to block movement, and each faction's soundtrack is a themed arrangement of that character's own Touhou leitmotif, a detail multiple reviewers singled out as evidence of real care rather than a lazy asset flip.

That care comes with real Early Access growing pains around balance. Only four of a planned eight-or-more factions are currently playable, and several detailed reviews argue the existing four are already unevenly matched — one long, frustrated review put it bluntly: "the balancing of the factions is so bad it leaves me wondering if the dev actually has bias when balancing the empires," singling out the Moriya faction as having "the best economy" and heroes that are "stupidly OP" against a comparatively toothless Scarlet Devil roster. The AI draws similarly split reactions: some reviewers found it "capable of surprising tactical depth," willingly retreating and fortifying, while others describe it getting stuck in logic loops, friendly-firing its own units, or snowballing unfairly early through favorable unit spawns.

Rough Edges Typical of a Two-Person Early Access Team

Beyond faction balance, the review pool surfaces a consistent list of smaller but real technical complaints: background music that fails to loop cleanly and cuts out mid-track before restarting, no ultrawide monitor support, no dedicated borderless-fullscreen option, and a lack of clear visual indicators for where units are already committed to moving next turn — a rough spot in any turn-based strategy game where misreading committed moves can cost a battle. A handful of reviewers also flagged missing quality-of-life features that Civilization veterans expect by default, like end-of-match scoreboards, turn-by-turn score graphs, and a streamlined in-game wiki that currently requires clicking through several separate tabs to compare a single unit's upgrade tiers. None of these are described as dealbreakers by the people reporting them — the recurring framing is "rough but it's Early Access" rather than "broken" — but they're a fair snapshot of what a genuinely two-person team hasn't gotten to yet, four months after launch.

An Almost Absurdly Easy Recommendation at $3.99

What consistently pulls reviewers past those rough edges is the price. At $3.99, TOHOTOPIA sits well below what reviewers expect to pay even for a stripped-down strategy game, and the review pool treats that price point as doing a lot of the persuasive work: multiple reviews frame it explicitly as a low-risk way to sample a promising Early Access project, with one noting bluntly that you can finish the tutorial and a couple of full games before Steam's two-hour refund window closes, "so you lose nothing by trying it." Others compare the cost favorably to a fast-food combo meal while describing dozens or, in several extreme cases, over a hundred hours logged. The developer's visible responsiveness compounds the goodwill — reviewers repeatedly mention active player-feedback surveys, friendly communication, and a steady cadence of faction and mechanic additions since the May launch, which several reviewers say has already meaningfully improved the game relative to its original demo build.

Verdict

TOHOTOPIA doesn't pretend to be more original than it is — strip away the Touhou coat of paint and the skeleton underneath is unmistakably Battle of Polytopia's, filtered through a Civilization-style culture system. What earns it a genuine recommendation anyway is execution: faction-specific hero abilities that go beyond palette-swapping, a soundtrack that clearly understands the source material it's drawing from, and a developer visibly iterating in response to player feedback at a pace that Early Access strategy games rarely manage. Balance between the four currently-playable factions needs real attention, and the UI still has gaps a more experienced team would have caught, but for $3.99, this is a strategy-game demo of a fully-priced idea that's already worth more than its asking price — whether or not you know who Remilia Scarlet is going in.