Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (LIGHTSPEED EDITION)
Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition is a turn-based combat space simulation R.P.G. both developed and published by Massive Damage, Inc. After a devastating attack by a relentless unknown alien species decimates the New Terran Federation, you are immediately put in command of the starbase Halcyon 6. It’s up to you to rebuild the Federation, make lasting alliances with alien species, gather vital resources and prepare to stop the impending alien invasion that has it’s sights set on Earth. Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition includes a number of additional content, optimizations and new updates to the original award winning title, Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander, that vastly improves the overall gameplay experience of the first title. Prepare to take your seat in the commander’s chair for this thrilling spacefaring adventure.
– Real player with 39.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Tactical RPG Games.
I was expecting some revival of MOO2.
I started my first game at “Commander level”, expecting to take a quick and severe defeat, but learn enough for an enjoyable second round.
For the first 8 hours, it was fun: build your ships, evolve your captains, oh! there is a tech tree, great! And those aliens, are they friendly or not? Pirates, space travellers, threats, offers.. Excellent!
After 8 hours, I started to realize that:
1/ I did not made any strategic decision, I just clicked randomly on the various “evolution trees”, I did not experience a single defeat.
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
Arcane Sorcery
This game feels like a cross between Master of Magic and Medieval Total War (the first one that is). Gameplay wise, it feels like Master of Magic with the magic spells, and the isometric battle system, but the campaign maps feel more like the original Medieval Total War. As one of the other reviews described, it has an early 90’s feel to the graphics (and for once that phrase does not mean ‘pixel art’, which is a rarity). The 4x nature of the game is more 4x-lite, specifically with lite aspects on the diplomacy and exploring aspects of 4x. There’s three different maps, but it would be nice if there was random map generation, though that would probably require a different map style I think. It has flaws, but it’s an inexpensive game as well.
– Real player with 32.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Grand Strategy Games.
A game that strongly resembles strategy games of yesteryear, that actually does not pretend to be anything else. Its pretty straight forward, without much tactical depth or need for strategic thinking. Still its an enjoyable game, even if only for a couple of runs, its still worth playing. If you are a hardcore 4x or strategy player, I would strongly suggest you stay clear, for you will be disappointed as the game lacks in both areas. Its perfect for the casual strategist, looking for a fun run.
– Real player with 26.7 hrs in game
Grim wanderings 2
Worth it! Whether you are playing Adventure or Strategy, you are getting to play a great turn based RPG.
There are so many more options to solve encounters rather than just being a murder hobo. I would even say it is the best strategy for the first bunch of turns until you get your 4 man party set. The combat itself takes place on a tight hex grid, but you get used to getting your party in the right place at the right time.
There are more gameplay mechanics still to come, at least as far as I seen in Strategy play. There is just soooo much you could do with this game with infinite development time. MP Strategy mode would be a great way to make and then lose friends in bitter defeats :) And multiple campaigns for Adventure mode would extend the replay value beyond its already ridiculous value (FUN/time+money). Maybe even slow down the pace of leveling, to make campaigns just for 1-7, 8-15, then high level play.
– Real player with 127.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Tactical RPG Games.
What a great hidden gem. A 4x that its not sophisticated in special effects, but in terms of abilities, races, classes and gear is fleshed out. Plus, it comes with a side dish of strategy and base building, so the resources do not apply only to craft. It is dificult to balance a good party tho, and to make things worse you dont get to pick a starting one, adding an extra layer of dificulty to an already complex game. In fact, you are in some things dependent too much on luck. This is the con, if you are not happy with the rooster of the chars available at start, you gonna have to wait a week for a roll on new ones. And the same happens for gear, having to leave some chars even without weapons for a while. Plus, there is a “pick a card” mini-game instead of dice rolls, and might be me, but luck is really not on my side. Regardless it is a very fun game after these hurdles, and the price makes it a must buy.
– Real player with 110.3 hrs in game
Zenith Frontier
Zenith Frontier is an interstellar strategy simulation game. Explore and colonise hostile exoplanets and help humanity survive the struggles of 2040 and beyond.
Zenith Frontier features several novel mechanics in the context of traditional 4X and grand strategy gameplay elements. Experience visionary strategic gameplay set in an evolving procedural galaxy populated by billions ot autonomous citizens and private companies. Build a faction with a rich background and strong identity, then oversee their interstellar efforts to advance their position within the precarious New Space Age.
New Gameplay Features:
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A Shared Origin: Factions start in the same overpopulated, suffering home system and compete to expand outwards in the year 2040. This is made possible by the recent discovery of –REDACTED– which allows high-tech spacecraft to slip into subspace.
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Volatile Subspace: Exploration of this newly accessible subspace is incredibly dangerous. This chaotic region is thick with dark matter and swirling dark energy fields, but the ability to travel interstellar distances in considerably shorter timeframes may be worth the risk. Known safe routes will become critical to sustaining your remote holdings, but beware - subspace is neither static or stable and these routes may change!
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Information is Essential: Unshielded signals will be destroyed in subspace and must be carried through by comm drones. News that arrives at your capital from a distant colony will be out-of-date - the situation will have evolved and you will have to consider this when planning your response. Additionally, perhaps the illegal hijacking of another’s comm drones will glean some strategic information - and prevent it from arriving at its intended destination!
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Special Relativity: Spacecraft travelling at incredible speeds and colonies established within deep gravity wells will experience first-hand the effects of special relativity and time dilation. Time will progress more quickly for the crew of your –REDACTED– spacecraft making a long journey at high speeds than the colony they are destined for.
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Geospatial Resource Pricing: A supply and demand model for price determination within a dynamic economic system that includes taxes, import/export fees and transportation costs mean that resource prices will vary throughout the galaxy. Plan your economic developments accordingly - or invest in this interstellar network infrastructure to take a slice of your rival’s operations.
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Top Level Direction: Shape your faction from the top down by issuing orders, directives, and edicts to your military staff, governors, and private sector. These are executed autonomously, which can lead to surprising outcomes. This indirect control poses interesting strategic challenges.
Traditional Gameplay Features:
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Diplomacy and Politics
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Research and Technology
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Military Conflict
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Management and Governance
Zenith Frontier’s Design Pillars:
Zenith Frontier is being designed and developed in line with these pillars.
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Emergence - A rich, living world that generates unique emergent scenarios.
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Strategic Depth - A semantic network of interconnect systems.
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Gameplay Over Graphics - A high quality interactive system that priotises gameplay.
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Self-Directed - The player is primarily working towards self-selected goals in open gameplay.
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Top Level Decisions - The player provides direction from the top-down to autonomous agents.
Leylines
I am surprised this game has not gained enough attention as I will have to spread the word out about this game.
Here is what I like about this game:
It has a very interesting Hero System meaning as you gain experience points you can spend experience points to improve a number of skills along with improving your main stats of your Hero like health, defense, attack, resist and moving around on the world map. It has at least 20-30 skills you can spend your experience on .
Other 4x games when you gain a level you get some increases based on that new level but in this game you spend your experience as you see fit so there really are no levels in this game so I think it is actually a better system.
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Game lagging every 2-3 second. Playing is impossible.
– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game
Space Empires I
I remember playing Space Empires way back ages ago, so I was pretty excited to pick the series on steam again and replay them.
Sadly, Space Empires I is NOT FUNCTIONAL on windows 10 at this time. It cannot process a single turn, crashing to desktop when ‘end turn’ is pressed. game load and save functions also do not work either.
This should have been tested more before release.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
I had no idea Steam was carrying the Space Empires Series, and was incredibly shocked to see SE I and not SE II on the store list. So a little bit of history here. Aaron Hall back in 1993 was working on his personal project Space Empires and formed this game as a prototype for something bigger and in 1995. We got Space Empires II.
Space Empires II was technically the first product released to the public and I remember sending in a money order to purchase this game after playing the shareware forever back in the mid 90s. I also got the CD when buying the complete bundle with Space Empire 4 Gold back in the early 2000s. Which was the only way I knew at the time, on how you actually got the original Space Empires prototype.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Space Empires II
i like the space battles
– Real player with 642.9 hrs in game
Well, I didn’t expect to see this on Steam! Classic “beer and pretzels” 4X game, rather simplistic compared to later Space Empires games but still fun to play. The UI is a bit clunky, particularly when it comes to issuing ship commands and building things, and pathfinding through warp points is nonexistent. I wish you could play online against other humans, rather than just locally or vs. the AI; the AI doesn’t seem to be too good at the game. But it’s a fun game to play if you just want to relax and conquer the universe.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Station Commander
The game is good, worth the money. I hope this will continue to be developed with regular patch updates. Some notes:
1. Pirate ships are too strong in early game. Make them less oppressive or add a difficulty setting so fighting pirates can feel more engaging.
2. Repairing ships is a serious chore. I mean like for each ship in a fleet (9 total) there are multiple clicks per ship which gets tedious very fast. Just add a simple way to repair all the ships in a fleet with one click.
3. The scaling on the storage modules is too high, forcing me to use almost all of my free slots to add storage space. I’d really like to use those slots for other modules….
– Real player with 7.1 hrs in game
Very bare bones resource collection / trading game. Best part of the game is gaming the planet economies and trading (sitting outside a planet desperate for food, waiting for prices to go up, selling at the peak, etc.)
Military units are really only for defending your trade/mining ships from pirates, or hunting pirates/other NPCs to take their cargo.
Your station itself, from what I can see, cannot come under attack in anyway so it’s not a high-octane challenge, but more of a fun little game to play with mini-stock markets in every planet (best part of the game is the economies shifting with line charts)
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
The Ancients
Earth in prehistoric times. The continents are shifting, the last ice age is coming. Fierce predators roam the land.
KEY FEATURES
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Survive in harsh conditions of prehistoric earth and wild creatures of virgin nature.
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Research and craft new tools according to your geographical needs.
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Protect your tribe from wild animals, cold winters, drought, make them feel safe.
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Discover the language and build an identity for your tribe so your people will be a whole.
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Create root religious ideas and combine them to create your own religion.
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Observe every change of your tribe. (Further reading tribe scene below)
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Build your own culture, make your tribe patriarchal or matriarchal, polygamic or monogamous, etc.
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Shape your tribe policies, authoritarian or free people, brutal or peaceful, equal or hierarchical. Each decision will help you deal with difficulties in its own way.
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Migrate different nodes on earth, to even the most impossible areas and try to survive there, you will be native to where you stay in the end.
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Meet the prehistoric animals, and be prey to them or make them your prey.
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Witness the historical development of humanity or create your own history.
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Try to make the best decisions in various events caused by internal or external sources.
From being starving hunter-gatherers, you will develop a great tribe with many options on prehistoric technology to great cultural breakthroughs. Your goal is to survive and thrive in real-world-inspired locations and migrate to new lands.
CULTURE TREE
The culture tree is where you discover religion, policies, and human interactions inside and outside of your tribe, the main purpose of the culture segment is to allow the player to shape the cultural development of the people. We worked on it to make it as real as real tribe’s decisions.You decide the roots of the culture of your community and what they are like when they advanced to settled life.
RESEARCH TREE
The research tree aims to help the player overcome the obstacles of the game by inventing new tools materials and crafting options. Research Tree is composed of six different categories inspired by historically correct ancient technologies. Our research tree consists six different categories, and six consecutive historic periods. You can become better in any category than others, like historic tribes.
TRIBE SCENE
The Tribe Scene gives you a close-up look at your tribe’s development. You can see the results of your tribe development on this screen. In addition to visuals, tribesmen and tribe states can be observed here. You can check if your tribe members are fed, feeling safe, and bound to the tribe socially. Otherwise, they may fight, steal or leave the tribe. Being a tribe doesn’t mean traveling and eating together, you have to live together and survive as a community.
MIGRATION MAP
While surviving against the wild, relentless nature of the last ice age; travel the vast landscape of the ancient earth. The ancient earth was geographically different than the earth we know today. The world was not like today at the last ice age, do you want to try to walk to America from Asia? Do you know Britain and japan weren’t islands at all…
Discover the ancient earth with your tribe.
HEXAGONAL MAP AND TACTICS
In the game, the player controls different clans of a tribe. These clans may gather food, hunt animals, make camp, or later in the game improve campsite with basic structures like tents and fences against wild animals. Our maps consist of hexagon tiles which is very useful for planning tactics for your clans.
Treasure Fleet
There is a lot to like about Treasure Fleet, as it builds upon the legacy of Sid Meier’s Colonization. I personally like how the game puts more emphasis on naval ships and actually makes building a fleet of them much more practical then it ever was in Colonization. The idea of the supply mechanic does well to make exploring much more of a risk/reward thing where there can be consequences - especially when things go awry and your horses are stolen under you!
However, at the same time there is also quite a bit of game mechanics that just don’t feel like they work all that well, feel cheap, or are a direct downgrade with Sid Meier’s game. There is also a lot of quality of life features you might expect from other 4X titles to be here as well but are yet absent.
– Real player with 154.4 hrs in game
It a nice game but still not ready there to many feature and ui that suppost to be there but are not hopefully this get fixed, 1 exampel that that anger me alot is that soldier can lose there musket when they get attacked or attack, the problem is if you not carefull attack nativ/other colonys loose 50% attack dmg that include defens too, this feature suppost to be explained but it isnt and it ui suppost to be big enought so you can see it clearly but you dont you must look/see super good so the soldier doesnt lose musket. Other thing the nativ are pain in a** since all bunch a**hol* and do as they like give you stuff/attack/steal/demand and diplomacy dont work is just you take money from them until they get angry, you give them money and gona be nativ from same tribe gona attack you anyway, so it almost sad that auto you have kill them all. Game is annoying at the end need be fixed before it can be fun.
– Real player with 110.3 hrs in game