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Paragon Pioneers

A city-building idle game

Ratings

Age

13+

Category

Simulation

Languages

English

Paragon Pioneers is a comprehensive city-builder and management game where you settle and develop a vast archipelago. Manage complex production chains to satisfy the needs of your citizens, from basic food to luxury goods. Explore the fog of war to discover new islands with unique resources, and engage in tactical combat to protect your territory. Designed to be played at your own pace, it combines active management with idle progression, allowing your empire to grow even when you're away. Experience a premium, ad-free simulation focused on strategy and growth.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

86/100

Paragon Pioneers is a deep, thoughtfully designed city-builder that successfully blends idle mechanics with complex production chains. It’s a love letter to games like The Settlers or Anno, but perfectly optimized for mobile. The sense of progression is excellent—you start on a single island and slowly expand your empire across a vast archipelago, each island providing unique resources.

What I appreciate most is the absence of predatory monetization. It’s a premium experience where your success depends on your ability to manage logistics rather than your wallet. The art style is clean and readable, making it easy to see exactly where your production lines are breaking down. It’s a quiet, rewarding, and highly addictive game that respects the player's intelligence and time. If you love city-builders and management sims, this is a must-buy.

Dinsun reviewed on: Thu Apr 04 2024

Features

1

Deep and complex production chain management

2

Vast world with unique islands to discover

3

Tactical combat and territory expansion

4

Idle-friendly progression and growth

5

Premium experience with no ads or in-app purchases

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

Yes, but the game continues to progress while you are offline, making it easy to play in short bursts.

Ratings & Reviews

Better than you think!
Thu Oct 13 2022 Schnarfburger

Well this developer nailed it. This game scratches all the right spots! Its as idle as you need it to be, and i often am playing 30-60 min without needing to wait for a battle or ship delivery. Which is perfect for me! Looks like it will have great replay value too, and with the relatively low purchase cost (and no pay wall at all!), this is probably the best app ive gotten in a long time. Great work! Thoughts on things to consider: a little clearer detail on the trade route tutorial would be good, as well as a better explanation of how to grow gold supplies. Also, i think it would be helpful if when i click on higher level settlers like merchants or paragons, it would show me what buildings they open up. That would help beginners plan. Not a deal breaker at all, and i highly recommend this game :).

Glad I tried it
Thu Oct 27 2022 Dustinfghtf

Okay, so I was initially very skeptical of paying for an idle game, but I’m really glad I did. This looks cutesy and simplistic at a glance, and for the first couple of hours it is, but by the time you’ve been playing a few minutes here and there for a week you’ll realize you’re now quite busy and the game mechanics go much deeper than meets the eye. You’ll also see all the mistakes you made staring you in the face and spend the next week or two trying to correct them. For some that will be a bummer, but for the min/max and micromanaging crowd it’s an awesome experience. If you like resource management games, you can’t ask for better on mobile. My criticisms to the dev (I see that you read these)- The tutorial needs expanded a bit. I went an embarrassing amount of time just guessing at battle results before realizing I could scroll through the attack rounds to see who hits who and for how much damage. Also, the best tools for managing input/output of tiles is hidden in the settings menu and turned off by default? Why? Lastly, I know it’s an idle game, but mid-game slows to a crawl if you didn’t get lucky and set up your starting island correctly, which I’m sure many of us did because there’s no way to anticipate just how constrained space will become pretty quickly. Overall a great experience for the price, and the dev seems to be listening to feedback and updating. I say throw your coin at it and give it a try for yourself.

Not your normal idle game
Mon Jun 27 2022 Ejilah

This isn’t your basic click stare at idle game. This is a very deep and immersive idle game that will definitely keep you busy and will require you to work at it. I’ve been playing pretty regularly for just under a week now and I haven’t scratched the surface on what this game has to offer. To be completely honest there are times where all you can do is just wait until a ship gets to its destination or attack is completed ( in the game you can upgrade your ships so having to wait won’t be much of issue in the future). Overall I think the developer has done a great job with this game there is a lot to do. Anyone looking for a deeper and captivating idle game should definitely give this a try!

Very solid little game
Tue Jul 05 2022 Dracobolt

I’m actually between four and five stars for this, but I don’t want to drag the rating down. My main beefs are personal preference. When the dev says this is an idle game, he means it. Most things take a long time to complete. Ships take hours to travel between islands, and getting things like trade routes optimized can be a bit of a chore at times. That said, for the price, this is an excellent value, something I can check throughout the day but not have to enslave myself to timers or micro transactions. The dev is also very responsive to player feedback. Compared to a lot of grindy, ad-ridden games, this is a clear standout. Perhaps even a paragon of its genre. 😉

Surprising depth and interest
Wed Aug 16 2023 Deannon

If you’re the type of person that gets a lot of satisfaction out of making optimally efficient systems, this game is for you 😂 This is so fun and requires a nice kind of patience that I enjoy. There are waiting mechanisms built in, you can’t pay to speed them up, and they’re part of the lore and gameplay. There’s no fall off in terms of production when you don’t have the game open. So it can lend itself to an hour or more of tweaking and analyzing your network of islands, redistributing resources - and then maybe 10 minute chunks a couple times in the day, to check in and tweak as needed, with the system you built running along in the background. This is a long-running game, and the only way to speed it up is to get better at it. I’ve been playing for a week and still feel like I’m in the very early stages, getting my first few islands set up, but as I learn my systems get better and my growth gets faster. SO satisfying. Also, play with the music on if you can, the soundtrack is stunning.

Makes you want to come back
Mon Aug 01 2022 Jbkaok

I have really enjoyed this game - it is what an idle game should be! Many idle games try to hook you with countdowns and limited-time rewards that are predatory rather than satisfying. Paragon Pioneers has an intentional pace to it that makes you want to check in and make sure things are running smoothly. If you miss something there is no penalty- just pick up where you left off. There is also a great deal of depth to keep things interesting, as production lines keep gaining complexity. Very reasonable price for all this content!

Anno Mobile
Fri Feb 10 2023 Karaya 01

I can’t compliment this game enough. Tobias (dev) charges $3 for the best game I’ve played on iOS since 2007. Tobias could succumb to micro transactions for ships, or to speed time up, or anything else, but he doesn’t. You just have to spend a bit of time to learn the game. For Anno lovers, this is a phenomenal mobile port to satisfy the itch. I only need to check in once a day to monitor routes and production. T5 in one month. Pop crashes not possible with the current base mechanics. Looking forward to updates or a new release.

great but a bit buggy
Fri Feb 09 2024 Dustin (tm)

I’ve experienced a couple persistent bugs related to production. For example, the farm that produces material for rope/paper wouldn't begin production unless i removed the farm and placed it again. Another one that is more persistent is the production of booze. I would come back to the app the next day and see that pioneers weren’t happy because they didn't have enough booze. i would build another farm and think i have it resolved. next day same thing… I began to notice that when i returned to the game after a break their production was halted because they had no available storage. How could that be though if the people don’t have enough? I then noticed that if I tap on the farm it would clear the error and production would resume. This bug was a bit of a dealbreaker for me… I couldn’t progress to the next level bc the Pioneers weren’t happy enough to upgrade. Sad because it had a ton of potential. Im going to check out the sequel… hopefully these bugs were resolved.

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