title image

Terra Mystica

Board

Ratings

Age

4+

Category

Games

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.

Well worth 5 stars even with some things to do!!
Thu Dec 21 2017 7$tring

First of all, I want to complement the developers. I had never played this game before, and my first couple plays I doubted whether the many icons and windows were necessary. But after playing a few more times, I began to see what a complex and deep board game they had managed to develop. At first it had some bugs, but they have been quick to respond and fix things. They even fixed one bug I notified them of within a few days. Looking at the update history, I count about 25 updates in the last 8 months. I can’t think of another developer of iOS games who has been so quick to turn around updates to make the app better. Kudos to them. As to the game, I love it. I use iOS board game apps to decide if they are worth purchasing for real life table games, and I bought the actual game based on this app. One caveat is that this is a pretty deep and complex game, so may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Expect to spend an up to an hour or more even playing with bots. Looking forward to the Fire & Ice expansion. My only other issue is not really a fault with the app, but with the game designers. They did not play test the different factions enough, and have come up with different starting scores for the factions. Not a bad idea, but these points were not play tested well either, and the factions are still not properly balanced. Most new players won’t really notice it, but more experienced players will. I’m hoping Digidiced can gather more updated statistics to make the starting points better balanced for the factions.

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.

Some Youtube Videos found!

News found!

Steamforged confirms redundancies, crowdfunding cutback amid refocus on booming Warmachine - BoardGameWire

Steamforged confirms redundancies, crowdfunding cutback amid refocus on booming Warmachine  BoardGameWire

BoardGameWire Thu Jun 04 2026

The crowd-funding campaign for the special edition of the board game "Terra Mystica" has already raised over 48 million rubles - iXBT.games

The crowd-funding campaign for the special edition of the board game "Terra Mystica" has already raised over 48 million rubles  iXBT.games

iXBT.games Thu Nov 06 2025

High price complaints, sluggish start sees Steamforged slash Terra Mystica special edition all-in price by over $100 within hours of Gamefound launch - BoardGameWire

High price complaints, sluggish start sees Steamforged slash Terra Mystica special edition all-in price by over $100 within hours of Gamefound launch  BoardGameWire

BoardGameWire Wed Nov 05 2025

Classic euro board game Terra Mystica gets yet another special edition - Wargamer

Classic euro board game Terra Mystica gets yet another special edition  Wargamer

Wargamer Wed Sep 24 2025

STEAMFORGED ANNOUNCES 'TERRA MYSTICA: SPECIAL EDITION' - ICv2

STEAMFORGED ANNOUNCES 'TERRA MYSTICA: SPECIAL EDITION'  ICv2

ICv2 Fri Sep 19 2025

A 13x award-winning board game is back with a fancy Special Edition, but you'll need to be quick to get it - GamesRadar+

A 13x award-winning board game is back with a fancy Special Edition, but you'll need to be quick to get it  GamesRadar+

GamesRadar+ Fri Sep 19 2025

Best fantasy board games - Wargamer

Best fantasy board games  Wargamer

Wargamer Mon Jun 10 2024

Board games and sports betting: Why risk management matters - Pinnacle

Board games and sports betting: Why risk management matters  Pinnacle

Pinnacle Sun Feb 18 2024

Age of Innovation is the peak of evolution in the Terra Mystica series - Big Boss Battle

Age of Innovation is the peak of evolution in the Terra Mystica series  Big Boss Battle

Big Boss Battle Fri Sep 29 2023

An adaptation of Terra Mystica is coming from studio with Terraforming Mars screen rights - Dicebreaker

An adaptation of Terra Mystica is coming from studio with Terraforming Mars screen rights  Dicebreaker

Dicebreaker Mon Apr 03 2023

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