Polity

Polity is a casual, socially driven MMORPG set on Blue Dot 2, a colonised planet found for humanity by an AI called Snotra and now shared by humans and droids. The first thing to understand is what it isn't: there's no health bar, no mobs to farm, no raids. Everything that other MMORPGs treat as filler between fights — producing, cooking, trading, decorating your home, getting organised with the neighbours — is the actual game here. It's developed and published by indie studio Jib Games.

Your entry point is a trade: farming, forestry, mining, ranching, tailoring, or running food businesses like cafés, bakeries and patisseries. From there, production, cooking and player-to-player trade chain into each other while you explore a map of thousands of islands and furnish a home of your own. Around that base sit chapter-based story quests, achievements, puzzles, mini-games and avatar customisation that's far more generous than the genre norm. It's genuinely cross-platform — PC, Mac, iOS and Android share one world and one account — and it's designed for short bursts rather than long grinding sessions.

If one idea justifies the game's name, it's this: players found colonies, run for president, levy taxes, collect donations and decide which buildings go up and in what order. The map ends up as a record of what the community voted for and paid for out of its own virtual pockets. It's a charming mechanic with a built-in risk: a well-run colony develops real character, and an abandoned one shows just as clearly. Go in knowing that a large share of the experience depends on the people around you rather than on content the studio shipped.

Polity is free to play with no subscription and no box price: you download it free from its Steam page and from the mobile stores, and the core content — trades, colonies, exploration, trading — costs nothing. Monetisation runs on three tracks. Diamonds are the premium currency, sold in packs (roughly USD 4.99 for 100, up to USD 49.99 for 1,500) and aimed mainly at cosmetics, clothing and decoration. Story chapters are sold individually, with the first one free. And there are founder certificates, which let you start your own colony without having to win the presidency politically.

The studio frames this as pay for convenience rather than pay to win, and it has a case: the currency you earn by playing (poin) can be exchanged for diamonds, there are no loot boxes or battle passes, and the presidency can be won without spending. They also admit the fine print themselves — holding on to a presidency without spending is hard and takes a lot of work. In a game where social status is the endgame, that's a distinction each player will have to weigh for themselves.

It's live and in active development. It hit Steam early access in November 2021, arrived on mobile in 2022, and reached version 1.0 on June 27, 2024. Patch cadence has held steady since: update 4.0.14, for instance, added the mining, ranching and tailoring trades, the Giant Crab quest, café, patisserie and bakery commercial buildings, more items and outfits, and a rebalance of main-quest experience. The official roadmap promises a new trade roughly every three months, with fishing, interior design, airport and port management, and fashion design all on the list.

Polity is for anyone who wants a quiet shared world with trades, a home of their own and real neighbours voting on what gets built — a life sim with a social and political layer on top, playable from your phone in odd moments. It isn't for anyone after combat, character progression, an endgame, or a world that's busy at all hours. Worth saying plainly: this is a niche indie project, with a little over a hundred Steam reviews — mostly positive — and no public concurrency figures. Population density is its structural weak spot, and in a game whose heart is its community, that matters. If the pitch appeals to you, the good news is that finding out costs nothing.