lots of them, too. The premise is that the polar ice caps have melted, raising sea level so high that only the highest peaks and plateaus remain above water and making ships the common mode of transport.

In this post-apocalyptic waterworld, two main political factions have arisen: The Eden Initiative, who are slow to expand but work in harmony with the environment, and The Global Trust, who would probably argue that the world is past saving and build fast with little regard for its surroundings but are susceptible to pollution and depleted resources. There’s also the S.A.A.T., a mysterious research organisation that works mostly behinds the scenes to create new technologies.

For a player returning to the series from the last game, Anno 1404, we’d imagine that it’s initially a more confusing experience than new players. The new interface has been given an appropriate science fiction theme, with steel blue pull-down menus and tiny fonts. It’s not easy to navigate and the size of the text makes warming back into the familiar mechanics quite a chore, especially when the tutorial system hinges on finding the next step in the mission chain. But Anno 2070 is still the same game at its core and it’s a strategy concept familiar enough for new players to get to grips with fairly easily.

Having launched a boat from our faction’s flotilla, the Ark, we’re off to find an unoccupied island to inhabit, preferably one with resources and space in abundance. We build a warehouse and then, the cornerstone of any settlement, houses for our workers to live in. From there, we usually adhere to a chain of building and manufacturing priorities, power plants for energy, fisheries for the most common source of food, mines for raw building materials before we start investing in luxuries, like distilleries, casinos and other means of keeping the people happy. Because if they’re bored, hungry, polluted or any one of the dozens of negative affects overwhelms your people, they’ll leave the island a ghost town. Natural disasters like rising sea levels are something we have no control over, but if we’ve prepared we’ll be able to cope with the aftermath without losing our entire settlement to the sea.

In the campaign mode the AI more or less bombards us with missions that we need to prioritise over whatever task we’re doing at the time. There’s a few too many fetch-and-return missions for our liking, but these usually come low down on the list compared to settling islands or attacking the threat posed by a rogue faction.