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[GP Trixie]

So the game launchs tomorrow, is anyone else planning on getting it ?

[Frumple]

Eventually, yes -- I want to give that game studio money, ha. Probably not on release, though. Likely end up waiting until it shows up in a bundle or goes on sale. I want to give them money, but don't have all that much to give

[Anvilfolk]

Their games tend to be pretty cheap. I'm a bit on the fence... on the one hand I want to support people who think out of the box in game design... on the other, often the designs they come up with aren't amazing. If it's $10 like Bionic Dues, I might just shell out once again

Edit: apparently there's some Let's Plays out here: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2014/04/first-tlf-lets-play-videos-surface.html

[EuchreJack]

It's $14.99 till April 25th, then $19.99.  I've got no money, so I'll wait till it hits the $10 mark.

[Retropunch]

I love the idea but it looks a bit kinda arcade-y to me - I was hoping for a bit of a deeper strategy sort of game. Sort of like a 4x mixed with an RTS, as from the videos it looks kinda like a sort of arcade game with a few longer term features in.

Any comments/reviews?

[MoLAoS]

The game was supposed to be out by now but it just says coming soon.

Also the story intro video was physically painful to watch. The voice, the names, the descriptions of races. I'm just gonna pray they spent all their good ideas on the game and that's why the story is so bad.

[Retropunch]

Yeah the videos were kinda terrible. AI War always seemed to have such an awesome atmosphere and tactical depth, so it's a bit strange the direction they've gone in with this.

Still, I've enjoyed most of what they've done to varying degrees - please post your thoughts if you pick it up, it won't be reviewed well on most game sites.

[MoLAoS]

I won in my second campaign. I only lost the first cause I went on a combat mission for Hydral tech and died due to not paying attention or something. I got to the objective and it kept throwing me out of range, restarting my countdown so I eventually died. It was stupid.

I had a federation with Skylaxians, Peltians, and Andors. I clicked several buttons several times that should have recruited the Evucks but then although I got all the changes in influence they never actually joined. I was pretty pissed. I just spammed armada assistance for allies until my allies finally wiped them out. I stole my ship from the Bulusts or w/e the f they are called. The Thoraxians died first, not to anyone in the Federation, then the Acturians died next and then I guess the boreans or w/e the f they were called died after that. And someone else maybe? W/e.

The diplomacy gameplay is lame. You give spacetech to a few guys, help them colonize moons, help them do research or trade research or give them research and then spam build armada. You'll probably get a federation with 2 guys, then bribe or armada boost another guy into joining. Then you may get one or two more depending on how many died already and what not.

Fighting in your own ship is stupid because you insta lose if you die. So best not to do it.

Honestly the gameplay is so simple I had no trouble planning my strategy. I would have preferred to pay 5-10$ for this instead of 15$. Too bad I can't take back my purchase. I guess its not a bad game except the price is too high. Maybe its just too casual a game for me.

Perhaps there might be some value in replays on high difficulty attempting to recruit everyone to your federation as an RP goal. Also I never once got any tech from Hydral signals or the black market, and in fact didn't bother with the black market at all. Scientists for instance are never worth it. The time spent raising money outweighs the benefit of faster tech. Also I only used tech for influence boosting purposes.

[MoLAoS]

Okay I won again, after dying twice in the opening fight trying to set combat difficulty to max even though I didn't want to try hard at it. Last time I won on normal/normal and now I won on hard/hard. I had all the races in the federation except the boraines or w/e because they were the planet I stole my ship from and the burustus or w/e because I couldn't force the last of my allies to stop attacking them so they lost their last world too soon. They would have joined had they lived.

So hard mode, actually did better than normal mode. I suspect I could pull out a perfect game in 3 or 4 more tries on hard but I would be making almost identical moves so it would be dull. Definitely agree with my first post, game is a 10$ game tops.

[Shadowgandor]

To me, this game isn't about winning, but rather interacting with all the different races and setting smaller goals for yourself (Raise skylaxians to become something like the precursors were in mass effect, try to make every race live in good environments etc). I admit I haven't played for longer then 4 hours, but that was only because the sun was coming up :p

[Retropunch]

Can someone give a bit of a broader review of it? as I didn't really understand much of what MoLAoS was saying.

[Ghazkull]

Finishing my first Campaign was quite the interesting ride. I started out on the Skylaxian Homeworld (you choose one of the 8 homeowlrds at your starting point and that race hates you from there on out) and immediately brought the great wonders of Space Tech to the Burlusts (Warmongering Madmen), the Thoraxians (Hivemind Insect Killermachines) and the Evucks (isolationist amoral Scientist guys). This lead to the Skylaxians being outraged of course but hell what do i care? Establishing a Trade Route between the THoraxians and the Evucks lead to them becoming friends while i killed the Head Warlord of the Burlucks and thus got their respect.

Quite suprisingly the Burlucks were the most peaceful folk in the game. in General it seems like the most aggressive ones are the Anconians (the Ultra-Capitalist Robots), which are also the fastest reproducing and expanding folk in the game. After some flying back and forth, imporving relations and preventing total doom at the hand of a plague for the Thoraxians i could finally establish my Federation, consisting of THoraxians and Evucks with the soon added Burlucks (which for some reason easily consented) and as a fourth player in the game the Anconians. From there on out things turned suddenly odd. Thoraxian and Burluck fleets started invading the Skylaxians and soon enough the planet belonged to the...Anconians? While i didn't look the robots ramped up a massive military program and took over the helm of the Federations Military eclipsing the combined military of Burlucks,Thoraxians and Evucks (300, 70 and 2000 respectively) by a margin of 2000. With teh Skylaxians wiped out, soon enough things got even worse. The Peltians (the barn-owl, communist peace farmers) and the Borenians (weird loner people) got steamrolled and their planets turned also into Anconian Factories. And before i could even think of a way to rectify that the Andor got Space Tech...and what glorious space Tech. With a Fleet Strength of 4000 they were actually capable of holding of the Anconian Swarm. And true soon enough their numbers started growing and growing and growing...and suddenly i was staring at a 12 billion population planet with 30k fleet Strength opposing the Anconians, which had undergone the same development on their homeworld 14 billion pop and a similiar strong fleet. While the rest of the galaxy was slowly turning into a backwater those two started duking it out and before long fleets where send back and forth betweent he two homeworlds to alternatively help the defenders or attack the others. putting it on fast forward the entire thing got larger and larger...and then i decided to take one missiona gainst the Andors...which led to teh curious event that their entire fleet started to fall apart and vaporize. Beaten into submission they joined the Federation. And...yeah thats it.

[MoLAoS]

You mean the Acutians? The races are:
Hydral
Acutian
Andors
Peltians
Skylaxians
Boarines
Burlusts
Evucks
Thoraxians

[GreatJustice]

Welp, I tried my first game, and after about two hours of playing, here are my thoughts:

-Space combat is okay, but very cluttered. Thus far, it's basically come down to me randomly flying away from the gigantic storm of bullets, clicking the right weapon to get through shields/hull, and periodically using a "super ability".

-There is a lot of complexity, but a disproportionate amount of it seems kind of meaningless and irrelevant to what actually happens.

-The way features are slowly taught to the player is interesting, but I feel kind of aimless, just flying around attacking pirates and clicking "Help with research" on certain planets. I don't really know what I should be doing or where I should be going, since early game there is very little to do.

-There is a lot of repetitiveness too. I stole every tech from the Acutians in the exact same level, with a space station on one side of the map and a bunch of ships on the other. I did the exact same thing each time (switch to blasters, rush the station), and received the exact same result (shield goes down a turn before I jump out to safety, enemy weapons can't pierce hull).

-Honestly, there's too much "click on this button to marginally increase the stats of Race X while a lot of time passes by" and not enough actual stuff happening. I also feel like my ship becomes more and more obsolete each time I do this, and I don't see a way to make it efficient at all.

I want to love this game, I really do. The concept is basically something I've been looking for for ages, and it's only really been done by Space Rangers (which was a bit buggy, poorly translated, and had a slow end game) and Drox Operative (which, to my understanding, is a grindfest). I just can't say I've seen anything about it that's incredible, though. Hopefully late game will improve my view.

[MoLAoS]

Welp, I tried my first game, and after about two hours of playing, here are my thoughts:

-Space combat is okay, but very cluttered. Thus far, it's basically come down to me randomly flying away from the gigantic storm of bullets, clicking the right weapon to get through shields/hull, and periodically using a "super ability".

-There is a lot of complexity, but a disproportionate amount of it seems kind of meaningless and irrelevant to what actually happens.

-The way features are slowly taught to the player is interesting, but I feel kind of aimless, just flying around attacking pirates and clicking "Help with research" on certain planets. I don't really know what I should be doing or where I should be going, since early game there is very little to do.

-There is a lot of repetitiveness too. I stole every tech from the Acutians in the exact same level, with a space station on one side of the map and a bunch of ships on the other. I did the exact same thing each time (switch to blasters, rush the station), and received the exact same result (shield goes down a turn before I jump out to safety, enemy weapons can't pierce hull).

-Honestly, there's too much "click on this button to marginally increase the stats of Race X while a lot of time passes by" and not enough actual stuff happening. I also feel like my ship becomes more and more obsolete each time I do this, and I don't see a way to make it efficient at all.

I want to love this game, I really do. The concept is basically something I've been looking for for ages, and it's only really been done by Space Rangers (which was a bit buggy, poorly translated, and had a slow end game) and Drox Operative (which, to my understanding, is a grindfest). I just can't say I've seen anything about it that's incredible, though. Hopefully late game will improve my view.

I mean, turn based games, or real time with pause in the case of Paradox, are often click to wait. I'm not sure its avoidable. I often threw down 60month help with armada dispatches and just slammed the speed up button in end game.

I almost never fight. I usually only get into fights to drop off spacefaring or terraformers onto planets for massive influence boosts and the easiest way is just to max speed and throw up your cloak once you get near to ships. 5 turns is EASILY enough to reach the little drop off thingy.

I tried bribes once but the value of a bribe is not enough to justify 2500 credits when that takes 30 months on the top credit mission, help with armada.

Its another of Arcen's high concept, low execution games I think.