The Universim
March 2019 Update
Population explosion has a limit now, which in a recent game (currently year 610) it seems to top out around 250-270. The spread of the nugget stone huts seems to work in small grid pattern, 8 or so huts in a small rectangular area. What determines where they start plopping huts i do not know. Its much more efficient in some respects, although you will get a housing block started far out of the city core at times. Eventually with Tudor Architecture the nuggets will upgrade the stone huts to larger multi family homes. This is great when it comes to saving space, its just being an automatic process, you cant turn off the control. Which means houses in areas you want to abandon upgrading, while next to the beautiful Town Hall is 4 stone age huts. This means duplicate services for those out of reach areas, this doesnt hurt early game too much, but you feel the crunch later. Especially when it comes to refined resources.
– Real player with 647.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Early Access Games.
1. Early Access - A Preface
With any Early Access game, you need to make allowances. There’s going to be bugs and many features lacking and not everything will happen on time - after all EA is often something that small studios do to keep the lights on while they are developing the game.
That doesn’t mean you have to put up with everything. Early access makes it all the more important, that you have proper process management, a capable team lead, a plan and a time frame, that probably shouldn’t be longer than two or three years from EA start to release. During that time what’s there of the game should be playable without constantly running into gamebreaking bugs, because if people stop enjoying the game, they are not going to stay, not to mention that it’s very bad for the word of mouth factor.
– Real player with 82.4 hrs in game
Starport Delta
This game first caught my eye at PAX East 2019, mostly for being set in Space and the beautiful artwork.
While my first genre of choice is FPS, I mainly look for games with an interesting story line. This game is hard to fit into one genre. To paraphrase one of the responses in the discussions, it sits in a mix category of strategy survival, puzzler, and hex based tower defense.
The story line in Starport Delta really is fantastic in multiple ways. The voice acting is top notch for the characters. They portray the feeling and the characters themselves very well. Specifically the one character that the game sends you to ‘help’ a lot, Nodj Stekson. He has a very wide range of growth he goes through during the game, and it’s portrayed perfectly.
– Real player with 169.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Space Games.
I want to start this off with the fact that this game was developed by a team of TWO developers! They are insanely talented individuals and have been responding to player feedback at an amazing pace! The updates and fixes are coming in quickly and the developers are willing to interact with their community to continually improve the game!
Starport Delta first appears to be a simplistic resource management and building game. However, it quickly becomes one of those games that is easy in concept and difficult to master! This makes it such a worthy challenge for any player who enjoys finding the nuisances of a game and bending them to their will. For those who enjoy a more peaceful, zen type experience: the game provides that opportunity as well!
– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game
Startopia
Be warned that this game is old and the interface feels all 20 years of its age.
However, if you can stomach old games, this is one of the true classics from its era. A space station management/tycoon game with a lot of heart and humor. Numerous ways to build your station, several ways to challenge yourself or just relax and mess around.
I’ve played this off and on for two decades and still own the original disc so my hours on Steam only reflect buying it again here for convenience.
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Of interest to fans: The original development company obviously went out of business, the game transferred ownership for a number of years to Square-Enix who did nothing with it and then released the game back to the care of one of the original developers.
– Real player with 91.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Management Games.
To date, I have purchased just over 15 games on Steam. Some of them have been complete wastenados of my money - one in particular I shelled out a lot for and only got a couple of hours of semi-enjoyment out of it. Startopia is the exact opposite of that game - I paid very little for it and, so far, I’ve gotten more hours of fun out of it than any other game I’ve purchased on here.
You’re managing a space station which is being visited by nine different alien types, each with their own preferences and skills. You have to build facilities to ensure these aliens are healthy, well-rested, well-fed, entertained and other things like that, make sure any aliens who cause trouble get rehabilitated, keep the station clean, and make sure you have enough energy to keep it all running. You’re aided by this artificially intelligent being called VAL who often peppers his advice with a degree of snark and you get occasional visits from a trader named Arona who I swear is a cross between a Vogon and Moneybags from Spyro 2.
– Real player with 74.2 hrs in game
Spacebase Startopia
preliminary review 2 days after launch:
after playing 4 hours in closed beta, 13 hours since release and over the years easily 200+ hours of the real startopia i can say with confidence: no.
just no.
i’ll try to keep it fair here. at first i was not amused, by now i’m straight p#ssed off.
at some point this game could end up being really good but that time feels months away. there are so many things in need of more polish, more refinement or plain fixing that it sucks the fun out of everything.
– Real player with 69.5 hrs in game
Full video review: https://youtu.be/CaWaqrCVwdE
Summarized version below!
I should clarify that I have not played the original Startopia, and thus won’t be making any comparisons here. That said, I am a fan of such simulation, management, and base building games, so I was quite excited to give Spacebase Startopia a look.
Note: Trimmed review to fit character limit, check video for full version!
Learning Curve:
First up was the tutorial, which wasn’t really the greatest. It guides you along the steps to setting up a base, but it doesn’t really explain what each building, resource, and such does. You’re just kinda placing stuff to check off each objective. It wasn’t until I got into the campaign that I really started to understand things, but even then, it was mostly a trial and error affair while I figured it all out. And despite the cutesy graphics, there is a LOT to this game, especially once you start working on the fun deck and have like 20 different buildings to place down there.
– Real player with 33.2 hrs in game
Hope of Humanity
Pros:
Good music,
Cool concept.
Cons:
Quite often glitchy and laggy - idk this might just be me but my computer over adequate to run this game.
Lack of tutorials and proper english throughout the game
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
Would be nice if their was a tutorial, or training button accually worked in the game? Other than that, i have no flippin clue on what to do, or how to do it? People like to hear what to do, or how to do it from the game. In my years as a gamer, i have never had to read so much learning curve on a game like this one. If i don’t figure it out soon, i will be refunding that simple.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Age of Wonders: Planetfall
This game is easily one of the best newer strategy games (i.e. 4X style game) currently available for single player in my opinion, period. I’ve had a lot of time to try several of these sorts of games that are considered the top games in the category lately. Civ, Total War games, Stellaris, Endless Legend, the list goes on, but I always come back to this one.
NOTE: Many of the reviews for this game were from when the game was released, since then they did a massive update that re-balanced the game and overhauled several mechanics. A lot of the comments in negative reviews were from a year+ ago using the old mechanics. This game is being actively improved / patched as of Oct 2020 from what I’ve seen and they’re still releasing an expansion.
– Real player with 1901.7 hrs in game
As the game is now, I do not recommend it.
I played the entire series extensively, over 4.000 hours over all titles of the series, for me personally, they changed things that were good about the game, and kept things that were bad about it.
City Siege
The first thing that is really noticeable and changes the dynamic of sieges entirely, they removed gates from city walls, those were replaced by militias and defensive towers, however these militias don’t have mods, and you can’t aim the towers, so any other troop that attacks the city will be stronger.
– Real player with 1383.1 hrs in game
ViSP - Virtual Space Port
Nice game. Simple graphics and simple mechanics - but very challenging and addictive.
The control scheme is quite unusual but very intuitive.
A fine example showing a fresh idea with a well thought out implementation is more important than a big budget.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
The demo for this game was quite good. Then buying the full game just ramps the difficulty waaay up beyond the intro levels. It is unnecessarily difficult, and I truly gave it my all. I made it through a couple levels past what the demo offers, and according to steam achievements, only 11.8% of players made it as far as I did. There are no videos or walkthroughs online demonstrating a complete playthrough, and frankly, it may be downright impossible. You will be completely overrun by hordes of enemies before making it to the third set of levels, and I don’t understand why the enemy spawns are this absurd. The strategies of building redundancy, providing docks for resources, and keeping protection nearby just aren’t enough to keep pace with the game.
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Five Nations
A nice up-to-date looking 2D RTS like AoE2: Definitive Edition or C&C Remastered,
neat homage to Base Build Space RTS like Star Trek Armada 2 or Conquest: Frontier Wars.
Despite the game was made by a team of 2 people, it does rival AAA products.
While it does lack Multiplayer, Story and Single-player Skirmish are very well done.
The game has a really good Wiki page and Demo version on steam.
https://five-nations.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nations_Wiki
Five Nations is an impressive real-time strategy game that borrows action and gameplay elements from many of the genre’s classics. The game has a very deep and complex base build alike Age of Empires, where you have to care for 4 different resources, also the unit population. The map terrain has an interesting variety of open space and white nebulas where units can hide, but not use their abilities and are slower, also there are areas that do damage units if they try to pass them like red storm clouds.
– Real player with 112.0 hrs in game
I think its by sheer luck that I found this game. Someone on twitter just randomly brought it up and I got curious and looked it up. I first tried the demo and was very surprised!
For a small studio and their first game this is a REALLY impressive RTS! It does so many things well that alot of AAA RTS’s seem to struggle with. There’s a few blemishes here and there, but overall I am surprised at how polished and well designed all the mechanics are, and the factions feel very finely tuned to fit perfectly in a competitive scene.
– Real player with 80.3 hrs in game
ILL Space
ILL Space is a survival space station sim with elements of tower defense!
Construct your rigs with loads of different modules and grow them into fully-fledged autonomous mining colonies. Mine asteroids, manage colonists and crew and defend against the ever increasing cosmic threat!
Creativity is key, or enemies will soon overwhelm you. Will you spread your resources to create a fleet of smaller rigs with designated roles, or will you construct a bulky and slow station with some serious firepower - the choice is yours!
Take on various missions in the sector for the highest bidder and eventually create your own mining empire! You will haul cargo, conduct research for new modules and tools, scan asteroids, build stations and extract resources from harsh environments all the while defending from ancient alien force.
MINE asteroids for resources and position your rigs optimally for the highest yield.
DEFEND your assets at all costs.
BUILD your stations with loads of different modules.
PILOT and maneuver your rigs for tactical advantage.
Exogate Initiative
Exogate Initiative is a management/base-building game that puts you in charge of mankind’s first worlds exploration program. In the near future, a new technology will allow us to travel instantly anywhere in the universe, via portals known as Exogates. An international initiative is created to develop this technology and start the first exploration program.
You will lead mankind into the vast unknown, where we never before dreamt to tread.
In the depth of a mountain plan, excavate and build your base using a variety of specialized rooms and equipment.
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Complete freedom to dig anywhere on the map.
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Plan and build specialized rooms, explorers will need barracks to rest, a training field to prepare for their missions or a laboratory to study samples they brought back from other worlds.
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Place equipment in these rooms, each one of them will have a dedicated purpose.
Recruit, train and manage specialists from all around the world.
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You will unlock 6 different classes of explorers, the scientist will study flora and fauna on other worlds, the scholar will decipher alien culture and languages and the soldier will ensure everyone is safe.
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Explorers are called gaters, they are completely autonomous.
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Each gater is unique. They come from different countries, have different ages, look different.
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Take care of their needs and ensure their well-being, both physical and psychological, as they are constantly facing the unknown.
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They will develop relationships between each other, and losing a friend on a mission will not have the same impact as losing someone you hate.
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Provide them with the tools and suits needed for their journey
Assemble teams and send them exploring new worlds through the Exogate.
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Gaters will perform missions on their own but will request your help from time to time.
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These contacts are micro interactive stories that will constantly try to surprise you, and where you will sometimes have to make difficult decisions.
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They may discover new flora, fauna or even intelligent beings. There are more than 10 different kinds of encounters
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After each mission, teams will return with more experience and interesting things to study. This will allow you to unlock new technologies and earn money to keep the initiative running.
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