title image

Terra Mystica

Board

Ratings

Age

4+

Category

Board

Languages

English

In the world of Terra Mystica, 14 races battle for supremacy. Each faction is tied to a specific landscape and must terraform adjacent tiles to expand. Upgrade your structures to gain Workers, Priests, Coins, and Power. With no luck involved, every win is a result of your tactical prowess. Play locally or against players worldwide in this faithful digital adaptation of the multi-award-winning board game.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

90/100

Terra Mystica is a brilliant digital conversion of one of the highest-rated board games of all time. It is a 'eurogame' in its purest form—a deep strategy game with zero luck involved. You govern one of 14 factions, each with unique abilities, trying to terraform the map to build your settlements. The tension comes from the proximity to other players; being close to them limits your expansion but provides vital power bonuses.

The app transition is superb. The tutorial does an excellent job of explaining the complex rules, and the UI manages to fit a massive amount of information onto the screen without feeling overwhelming. Whether you're playing against the challenging AI or competing in cross-platform multiplayer, the depth is staggering. It’s a game of efficiency and long-term planning where the best strategist always wins. For fans of heavy board games, this is an essential digital port.

Dinsun reviewed on: Wed Feb 19 2025

Features

1

Faithful conversion of the original board game

2

14 unique factions with special abilities

3

Cross-platform multiplayer

4

Challenging AI with three difficulty levels

5

Interactive tutorial and replay system

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

No, Terra Mystica is a pure strategy game with no dice rolls or random card draws.

Ratings & Reviews

No Way to Change Game Clock or Undo Timeouts
Thu Oct 05 2017 Gemini6Ice

EDIT: this review has been bumped up because the developers have pointed out that when a player "times out," they can still rejoin the game until another player boots them. However, I've been the player to boot someone for timing out, and the dialog for doing so indicates that I am just acknowledging that another player timed out. This UX should require a confirmation of "are you sure you want to replace USER with an AI?" I still stand by my review that we should be able to select the timeout clock duration when creating a game, but the app is not useless, given what I've learned. Just unsatisfactory. ------ Original review: This app is useless for asynchronous play. I've yet to have a game where nobody times out and gets replaced by the AI. Gonna stick will the browser implementation by Snellman until the devs give users an option to undo an opponent's timeout or disable or extend the game clock when creating a game.

Good with occasional errors
Mon Feb 11 2019 Quidopher

Minus one star because of two things; errors and ease of use. The errors, I get sometimes after completing my turn. You have to start the app over again for it to work. Then you have to take the action again. It’s always worked after two tries. The second thing is that there are a lot of menus to check through. If I start to take an action I don’t have certain information available to me quickly. For example if I want to build or upgrade and I forgot how many workers I had I would have to close the screen, check my workers and potentially my income for future actions, etc. I wish it was all right there. On the positive side, the game looks and feels just like it’s analog counterpart. Great job with the look and feel. Works pretty well on my iPhone 7 and doesn’t require a massive screen to play.

A Good Start
Tue Feb 18 2020 Rye2424

While not perfect, the game does run as it is supposed to. There are glitches yet they are mostly visual and do not impact gameplay mechanics. And as mentioned in other reviews, the tutorial isn’t quite as helpful as it could be. It helped to give a basic understanding of the game’s mechanics but I still had to read the online pdf version of the rules to feel like I understood what all the symbols meant in the various panels. I haven’t tried the online multiplayer and can’t speak for that. Overall, it is a good adaptation that has room for improvement. For the price it is a decent way to “test” the game and see if you might like it or Gaia Project (the arguably better follow up to Terra Mystica with similar mechanics) as an addition to your physical collection.

Edited: Notifications suddenly stopped
Tue Aug 09 2022 pleeseemailme

I've played dozens of games with friends and then one day all notifications stopped. Devs won't respond to in-game bug reporting. I can't find a fix for this. The game is basically unplayable without notifications. Hopefully the devs see this and respond. I'd love to keep playing, but need notifications back. So frustrating spending money on a game and the most basic functionality fails. Edit: Notifications suddenly working again, still no response from devs

It’s okay, but it has plenty of problems
Tue Apr 13 2021 Renee M. W.

I love Terra Mystica, but this app does has its problems. The AIs take like five minutes to move sometimes. It’s frustrating because it shouldn’t take that long. Also, I keep having to restart the game because it keeps bugging out. I really do love this game but it needs to work out its bugs so the game runs smoother. I would do a five stars for the game itself but three stars because of the app. Please fix it developers :(

Great when it works
Mon Jul 09 2018 Pterofractal

The game is great. It is a good port of a pretty involved board game and it plays well even on my phone. The game ties itself to Game Center, which I honestly thought would be a pretty good thing but that seems to cause issues with the game sometimes. After a recent reinstall I haven’t run into any issues but I will try the steps outlined by the developer if something does happen again. The game is a solid port and a lot of fun. I highly encourage people to give it a try.

Nice adaptation that sometimes doesn’t work
Mon Nov 18 2019 Alfredband

This app looks great and simplifies the action in a game that some find fairly complex. I really enjoy it! I’m currently in a game with one human player and two AI opponents and we’ve been waiting for the AI to take its turn for roughly 20 hours. I have to assume the issue is server based, but there isn’t any indication in the app that anything is wrong anywhere. Update: Now that AI has completely exhausted his time and there does not appear to be any mechanism for removing him from the game.

Love this game, but this app isn’t worth the money
Fri Jun 29 2018 A person in NYC

I love this game, the UI is beautiful and true to the game. HOWVER, the interface makes it nearly impossible to play with others. App doesn’t connect regularly with server and freezes claiming you need to login. It’s an app problem not a login problem. I’m in game center. Worse yet, the app bugs out sometimes even when playing solo and you can no longer read the text unless you restart... which takes way too long to load. The app looks great, but the app isn’t worth the money for the bugs. Play online for free instead. The developer responded saying things like my phone is probably too old and needs to be restarted once a week at least. For the record I have a new iPhone8. The fact of the matter is if the game is such a memory hog, maybe it’s the app and not the user. I don’t have the same amount of lag or difficulties with any other GameCenter games.

Some Youtube Videos found!

News found!

Board game Terra Mystica rolls onto PCBoard game Terra Mystica rolls onto PC

I'm not a big board game lover, but friends who are keep telling me there's two in particular I must try. There's The R…

Rock Paper Shotgun Sat Jul 29 2017

Medieval board game The Castles of Burgundy is getting a videogame adaptationMedieval board game The Castles of Burgundy is getting a videogame adaptation

Digidiced has announced that it is developing a videogame version of board game The Castles of Burgundy to be released in 2019.

PC Gamer Wed Aug 29 2018

First Images of Terra Mystica Released By DIGIDICEDFirst Images of Terra Mystica Released By DIGIDICED

DIGIDICED, makers of quality board game renditions such as Uwe Rosenberg's well-loved 2 player games Patchwork, Le Havre: The Inland Port...

UnGeek Sat Apr 29 2017

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