App Army Assemble: Extinction Eclipse - "Does this in-depth RTS translate well to mobile?"

Extinction Eclipse is an RTS that released on Steam in November last year and has now made its way to mobile. Ports of PC games are becoming far more common on phones and tablets, but that doesn't mean they're all perfect. So we handed the game over to our App Army to see how it holds up.

Here's what they said:

I found this game very slow and although it was a strategy game there seemed to be very little work to do on my part once I set things in motion. Set your vessels to collect ore, deliver it to the base, and protect the base with your fighters. The graphics and the voiced narrative are okay but don’t have a wow factor, and you can play in story or skirmish mode.

While playing this game, I didn’t have enough spare time to play consistently for long periods, and this had one annoying result - every time I went back into the game to play I had to start from scratch. It made no sense. Needless to say, I didn’t get to see too far into the game which was disappointing and repetitive.

Extinction Eclipse is a fairly standard RTS game. Protect your space station, mine resources and take the fight to the enemy. Most of the play area is blacked out until you send satellites or ships to explore. On a PC this would be a fun game, on an iPhone it’s far too fiddly. The screen text is too small, the cut-out for the camera and Face ID sensors blocks out part of the screen, and selecting units is a pain. This is a shame cos with a bit more polishing this could be a fun strategy game but for now, it’s too frustrating to play.

I started playing this on my iPhone 15 Pro Max but quickly realized that that was quite a challenge. Primarily the really really small print. Much better on the iPad. There’s a lot to like about this game. I began to work out strategies and (in a rudimentary fashion) tactics considering that for some large enemy bases, I really didn’t know how strong they were. And when and where their sort of area of attack extends to.

How many waves of fighters do how much damage? Things like that. That’s the kind of thing I love discovering in an RTS and I was really enjoying myself. I did have trouble with the double tap to set the destination for a ship. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. Clicking on the type of ship to select all of that type. That kind of thing can, I imagine, be fixed in an update. But really what this awesome game so desperately needs is an in-game save, or at least a checkpoint system.

Otherwise, you’re going to be stuck for quite a while… or, you’ll have to resign a battler at some point because you have to get up. The thing is, I like this game. I like it a lot. But the lack of checkpoints or saves just about cripples it for me. And that’s a shame. I’d say it’s worth picking up and let’s hope the dev fixes this serious problem.

I struggled with the small screen on this game: selecting individual ships seemed hit and miss, and ship selection via the "all ships of this" type option at the top right seemed unreliable too. Trying to send a ship somewhere, by double tapping, also seemed to sometimes work and other times not - I could never establish if this was due to some rule or just random.

Overall it felt difficult to implement any kind of strategy - I could send a bunch of fighters off into the unknown and they would fly past enemy ships that were on their way to attack my base or other units.
I played the first 3 campaign missions then rage quit when (90% of the way through mission 4) I closed the app for a minute and on going back to it the app restarted and lost all of my mission progress. Developers, at least put some kind of checkpoint progress saving in!

Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on

In summary, an interesting idea (I was really looking forward to playing a classic RTS) but not very well implemented. Maybe it will improve in a later version, I would give it another try if they put mid-mission saving in.

The game is designed like a classic RTS. But after playing and fumbling with the controls. I just feel this game would be more enjoyable on a larger screen and played with a keyboard and mouse. It nails the look of classic RTS games. But on an iPhone twelve. I had an issue where the screen was cut off with the front-facing camera bar at the top.

Then notifications would take up screen space. The fonts are small. I couldn’t precisely select the ships I wanted and then send them off on their way and I felt I kept losing track of where everything was. If you click a ship the options menu will be on the other side of the screen. I felt it difficult to navigate around and keep track of my ships. Would prefer to play this on a computer with KB and mouse which is a shame as I can tell a lot of effort has gone into it.

You can’t have all these issues I remember playing C and C back in the day the ability to quickly and precisely order your troops to build and then send people off to attack in different ways made the game excellent. In this game, I can’t see I could ever get to that level with this Interface.

Extinction eclipse - a game that tries to do so many things right and also fails on other ends.
First of all, the tutorial has voice lines. Things are explained pretty well although these instruction images look misplaced(copied in with paint). But you can see it's an instruction so you follow them and have a brief moment until the game continues.

Selecting and commanding units is kinda fiddly. You're supposed to double-tap to send them but 2 single taps at different screen locations can send them as well which shouldn't happen
What annoys me the most is that you can't make mid-game pauses. So the game only works if you have a lot of time to sit down. It is not something you can pick up if you have a brief moment of spare time.

Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on

The graphics, sounds and atmosphere are overall good. Will need more time for a final judgement. I really want to like that game but I'd say it misses a bunch of QoL features. Further playing turned out to be fun if you had 20-30 minutes time depending on your knowledge and speed.

The App Army is Pocket Gamer's lovely community of mobile game experts. As often as possible, we ask them for their thoughts on the latest games and share them with you.

To join, simply head over to either our Discord Channel or Facebook Group and request access by answering the three questions. We'll then get you in right away.

Download now!

Extinction Eclipse