Fans of the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) turn-based genre may remember a Kickstarter project from a few years back called StarDrive. The idea was similar to games such as Civilization, but with galactic conquest in mind. Explore the stars! Parley with space bears! It was an ambitious effort, and they delivered on their product with decent reviews.
Their sophomore effort, StarDrive 2, continues this ambitious work. I’ve spent many hours trying to wrap my brain around all the little details in this game, and it… is intense.
At first glance, StarDrive 2 seems to be a rather standard civilization sim, but players will quickly see just how detailed the game can become. There are no regular “turns” in the game; everything moves at the same speed once you’ve selected all your upcoming actions. So while in essence you do take turns, the galaxy moves as a whole. Players begin with a home planet and a very small number of ships. Your specific solar system is randomly generated, and it’s entirely up to you how you’d like to proceed.
Players can opt to focus more on warships, exploration, or technology so that you can sit around at home. If you research technological advancements, you’ll receive assorted perks – stronger ships, or perhaps more abundant food for your planets.
It goes further than just planet and colony management, however. Fleets of ships can end up in massive space battles, which of course mean that you’ll want the latest guns and gadgets for your fighters. You can manage your ships’ payloads for optimal performance, or just let them fly and hope for the best.
Sometimes the fight will be taken to the ground, where you’ll get to control a small skirmish team to victory or defeat on land. Compared to the rest of the game, this is the only section that seems to be traditionally turn-based. Move your troops, knock out some soldiers, pass the turn.
What really made this game stand out to me were the colorful mercenaries who pass through your empire looking for work. My particular favorite was “Rambowl,” who… well… was Rambo, except an owl. The leaders of other factions and races are similarly quirky. You’ll find werewolf people, cthulu monsters and zerg-like hive minds that are REALLY insistent that you want to give them all your planets in exchange for nothing.
This unfortunately leads me to my one major qualm with the title. No matter which play-style you choose, one thing is certain; there is going to be some angry, aggressive alien faction who will flood your homeland with an impossible amount of warships just a short while after you begin your journey. With the default game settings, the AI seemed to be out for blood, and somehow always seemed to have quadruple the funds, manpower and hostility that I had at any given time. Although I had many great options at my disposal for diplomacy research, technology and expansion, I could never actually use any of them because I was too busy building a billion warships for self defense. Players who wish to play a pacifist are going to run into some trouble.
The bright side to this is that you can manually tweak just about everything about your map when you begin a new game, including players and number of solar systems.
To be perfectly clear, I am absolutely enjoying myself when I play this game, I can’t help but feel like I’m doing something wrong. I’m consistently bombarded by baddies, but the stubborn spirit in me refuses to turn down the game difficulty. If these are the defaults, they’re pretty rough defaults. Still, nobody ever said that conquering the galaxy was an easy task.
StarDrive 2 is currently available via Steam for Mac and PC at $29.99.
3/5
