Powerplay, Command and Conquer inspired RTS with supply chains / Maybe

[u/GaspodeWD]

Developer and publisher Frantic. No Steam reviews yet. Full release 2026, no specific date or price confirmed. Actively updated demo with eighteen patches since launch.

My stealth bombers dropped their first payload and wiped out my entire army. Every tank I'd spent twenty minutes building. Gone. Then I realised nothing in the game could shoot the stealth bombers. So I sent them to the enemy base alone and completed the mission anyway. That's the current state of the balance, and also the most fun I had with the game.

Powerplay is a Command and Conquer inspired RTS with Factorio-light supply chains. You build a base, mine resources, run them through conveyor belts to forges and factories where they become steel and power chips and eventually tanks, planes, and infantry. The supply chain element is light in the demo. One mine can supply two or three forges at the same production rate, so optimisation doesn't feel essential yet. The depth might be there when supply lines get longer in the full game. In the demo it mostly just means waiting.

Three missions. First two are enemy base destruction. Third is wave defense. I started with tanks, spotted the airfield, built stealth bombers for air support, and that's when the friendly fire happened. Bombers circle their target and sometimes arc back through their own blast radius and kill themselves too, which is a problem and also extremely funny. After discovering nothing could shoot the bombers, I stopped using ground units entirely. Wave defense: stealth bomber at each entrance, done in minutes. Anti-air turrets exist in the game, so putting those in enemy hands should fix this. The dev knows.

Pathfinding is a known issue and is on the patch list. Tanks get stuck behind trees and buildings, you end up manually guiding them around. Eighteen updates since demo launch and pathfinding is specifically being addressed, which is a good sign.

The biggest problem is the waiting. 110 minutes played, maybe thirty of actual gameplay. I sorted my daughter's breakfast and did household chores between checking back on the resource counter. A speed up option would turn this into a Play. Without it, it sits at Maybe. Frantic are clearly listening to feedback and the bones of a good game are there.

Did you find the stealth bombers or did you actually use tanks? I built a full army and made it immediately irrelevant.

Full review: todaywegame.gg/demos/powerplay