If you want to feel like an emperor who’s accidentally pushed the fast-forward button on the world clock, then you should grab the just-released Eight-Minute Empire ($4.99), the port of the award-winning game with the same name. The game’s name gives away the idea behind it: you have to build a whole empire in a very short span of time. Specifically, this fast-paced card game will have you doing the usual actions you’d expect from an empire-building game: recruiting troops, conquering parts of the map, collecting goods to get stronger, building castles to establish your dominance, and so on. It’s not the most ground-breaking empire-building game by any means, but it’s definitely fun and quick, which is always a good combination for mobile games.

The gameplay loop is pretty simple: you (and up to four other players) get to select cards from the six displayed, with each of the cards giving you resources and forcing you to take an action. Actions let you conquer lands while resources are points that get tallied at the end. Therefore, you’ll often have to decide which is more important at that moment, grabbing more land or getting more points at the end. Eight-Minute Empire comes with 3 AI levels and online multiplayer (both asynchronous and synchronous), so plenty of ways to play it. The base game costs $4.99, and it also has expansions you can grab as IAPs. Head over to our forum thread to see impressions from those who’ve either bought the game or were part of the beta.