The Best Strategy Mobile Game I Ever Played Just Came Back After a Decade

CNET

2 days ago

Battle Nations, a free-to-play turn-based military strategy game for phones developed by studio Z2Live, was taken from us too soon on Sept. 28, 2016. And I'm obviously not the only person who feels like the game didn't have enough time in the sun, because a new version of the game came back to mobile game stores on May 30, 2025 -- nearly a decade after the servers shut down for the last time.
I formed a Battle Nations guild with my friends back in middle school to take on some of the game's raids, but we were always severely under-leveled and outnumbered by our enemies. Battle Nations was released during the heyday of mobile gaming, completely revolutionizing what I believed the platform could do. Endless runners like Jetpack Joyride and Subway Surfers gave way to Battle Nations afternoons, filled with planning our group conquests, and it was glorious.
The new iteration of the game, called Battle Nations Rewritten, was completely remade by a group of fans who came together to form their own game studio, Madrona Games. This team of developers has spent the last several years ironing out legal proceedings with the game's original publisher, King, to gain the rights to use the Battle Nations trademark. Madrona's developers honed their skills with the release of another game, Tank Tactics, while publishing beta builds for their Patreon subscribers.
A tight-knit community of Battle Nations fans approached a major corporation with their own take on an old property and didn't have their fan project taken down. Z2Live was acquired by King in 2015, which is a company that was acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2016, which itself was later acquired by Microsoft in 2023 -- and despite this, Madrona Games was able to make peace with Battle Nations' parent company regardless of large gaming corporations' penchant for suing fan projects using their IP.
Now Battle Nations is back in all its former glory, allowing a whole new generation of players to build an outpost and expand their military forces in the name of the emperor.
The native wildlife is positively prehistoric and downright dangerous.
Madrona Games/Screenshot by CNET
What is Battle Nations about?
Battle Nations was lampooning fascistic empires before Helldivers 2 made it cool. You're the captain of the 95th Rifle Company of the Imperial Army, a once-renowned military presence that is starting to crack under siege from a rebel army.
As flames of conflict approach the capital, the teenage emperor sends your unit to a far-flung continent in search of resources to create a new superweapon. It's your job to grow a budding outpost into a massive military complex, fighting off rebels, vicious local fauna and gas-mask clad warriors that your chauvinistic lieutenant has deemed as "raiders."
Your allies are all pretty atrocious people, but their ignorance is constantly made the butt of the joke in Battle Nations' narrative writing. Raiders and rebels are consistently better outfitted and more competent than your team, which forces you to work even harder to stay combat-ready as you advance further into the game.
Part city-building simulator and part grid-based tactical battler, Battle Nations appeals to many different types of strategy gamers. I personally enjoyed crafting zany units and utilizing them to defend my outpost as I grew my city-state's economy.
Once players reach a high enough level, they'll be able to learn from raider allies to master mammoths and raptors, conduct medical experiments to turn their basic units into zombies and even hire the Team Fortress 2 mercenaries in a bizarre crossover with Valve. (The launch trailer seems to suggest that the famed mercenaries will return in the fan version.)
Battle Nations base building will make city sim players feel right at home.
Madrona Games/Screenshot by CNET
These advances are only made possible through economic prosperity and strong supply lines. Players need to create warehouses, expand their borders to resource deposits and build facilities to process raw materials into stronger forms if they want to build the best units. I've never been gifted at planning out my builds, but the best urban planners will find a great framework to create efficient (and pretty-looking) army bases.
As your outpost grows strong enough, you'll start to supplement your foot troops with tanks, helicopters and other heavy vehicles. I remember feeling like I was a true military power by the time Battle Nations shut down.
I can't wait to dive back into Battle Nations' take on turn-based combat, even if it means I have to start all over with the bog-standard riflemen.
As Battle Nations Rewritten grows and develops, player-versus-player occupations will likely return.
Madrona Games/Screenshot by CNET
What's next for Battle Nations Rewritten?
The new Battle Nations isn't shipping with every multiplayer feature included in the original game quite yet.
Madrona Games has promised that subsequent updates will restore many of the social elements missing from the launch build.
That means the friends list and guilds will be added soon. One of my favorite features from the original Battle Nations was the ability to let an ally raid resource deposits on your outpost to help them resupply materials they were low on, and it'll be great to see that collaborative gameplay make a return.
Boss strikes are also on the docket for a swift return, allowing players to combine their military might to chip away at a boss enemy's health bar (and earning sweet rewards if they're able to fully defeat it).
Beyond returning features, the developers plan to add "new narrative arcs, seasonal operations, time-limited events and more to keep the world of Battle Nations evolving."
Madrona Games' Battle Nations Rewritten is launching on every platform that the original Battle Nations was on. That means you're able to download the game from the App Store, Google Play Store and Steam for free now.