Developer / Distributor: Amplitude Studios / Iceberg Interactive
Release Date: 3 May 2012 (for Alpha Release only) / 24 Aug 2012 (Final Release)
Rating: PEGI 7+
[Latest Update, 9 May 2012 - Iceberg Interactive have just announced that Endless Space will be released on 24 Aug 2012. Congratulations to Amplitude Studios on this achievement!]
[Editor: Our third indie game review for the merry month of May. Enjoy!]
Introduction
Normally I only review completed games and preview anything that is passed to me in a beta release state. However, with the Alpha Release of Endless Space by Amplitude Studios, I just couldn't resist myself. This 4X turn based strategy science fiction themed game has quite an attractive and impressive package in terms of available game content. The game is also downright fun, and surprisingly very stable.
Designed and developed by an independent gathering of experienced video game lovers (and developers), Endless Space is not some fluke idea from out of the Star Trek universe, nor does it have anything to do with the Sith nor the Dark Side of the Force. Instead, as Creative Director for the game, Romain de Waubert (Lead Designer of Battlefield 1942 and Producer of Dark Messiah, Heroes of Might & Magic, Clash of Heroes and Call of Juarez) likes to put it, "...if Civilization, Master of Orion and Total War decided to have a child together, they may have called it Endless Space."
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| May we all live long and prosper in Endless Space |
Background Story and Game Features
In Endless Space, a precursor civilization known as the Endless have left behind a substance known as Dust. Scattered throughout the galaxy and found in the forgotten temples of this once mighty people, Dust is reputed to have given super powers to their military leaders and politicians. The faction that controls the Dust and uncover its secret, shall rule the realms of Endless Space.
The final game is slated to have eight civilizations fighting tooth and claw for galactic dominion in a galaxy filled with up to 200 star systems (or if you want to be finicky about it – up to a maximum of 1200 planets to fight over). You shall be able to play in single player or multiplayer match-ups with up to seven human or AI opponents. There are even further options to customize the galaxy, your AI opponents, and victory conditions - more than enough to whet any appetite.
[Editor: "Tooth and claw"? Hopefully the final game will also have "pseudopod and tendril".]
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| Design your game |
Alien Civilizations
Do note that for the Alpha Release, you will only be getting 5 out of 8 civilizations. You should also expect much tweaking by the developers and their team of testers to improve the game balance and to implement much needed features.
The five civilizations are:
- United Empire - This faction is the de-facto human race, one that comprises of greedy corporations. It turns out humanity is an evil race... well, that at least is a refreshing change.
- Sophons - The Sophons are a good race of humanoid beings that's adept at science. They are thirsty for all the knowledge that abounds in the universe.
- Hissho - Evil bird-like creatures, the proud and honourable Hissho are tribal warriors with a history of bloodshed, conquest, vengeance, and domination... ahh, my kind of race.
- Cravers - It's funny how these evil insectoids have a different but yet simplistic outlook to life – everything else that lives and breathe is food!
- Horatio - Imagine a narcissistic and rich human from the United Empire who through cloning creates a new race based on himself. This is a neutral civilization where everyone looks like everyone else, and even sports the same name - Horatio.
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| Conquest and domination... the Hissho way! |
Tutorials and Menu Bar
Once your game begins for the very first time, you will be greeted by a series of very detailed tutorial panels that describe every aspect of the current screen you are viewing. You start off the game in the Galaxy View where you will see your home star system and its sole populated planet. If you were to click on one of the icons of the menu bar (also known as the Control Banner) found at the upper left hand corner, you will access a different area of the game. At the same time, the tutorial panel for that section will appear to guide you. You can turn off the tutorial from the Options menu when you are very familiar with the interface and game play mechanics.
The menu bar icons (from left to right) are as follows: Galaxy View, Empire Management, Research, Military View, Diplomacy and Negotiation, and Academy and Heroes. The last icon is used for saving and loading your game as well as to access the Options menu.
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| The tutorial panels will ease you into the game |
Let's cover each of the major aspects of the game in some detail.
Galaxy View
The Galaxy View shows the location of your budding space-faring civilization in Endless Space. You can pan the view with your mouse and conveniently zoom in or out via the mouse wheel.
Endless Space can be quite large (depending on the Galaxy Size you selected) as depicted by the view of the galactic plane in the background. However, one thing's for sure, you won't have to worry about rotating and panning your view in 3D; the galaxies generated by the engine are all flat and in good old 2D. In my opinion, this is the best way of playing a good old 4X game. Case in point - the Civilization series is also in 2D, while the Heroes of Might and Magic series have an abstracted form of 3D. Games that are in 3D are not always successful with their implementation.
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| The Frisbee Galaxy |
System and Planet View
Each star system will have up to six planets as represented by the presence of little coloured circles on the Galaxy View. If you click on a star system, you will see the planets that make up the system. Each planet has four distinct resources listed at the top of the screen. They are abbreviated as FIDS - F for food surplus (green leaf), I for industry (orange gears), D for dust (yellow circles), and S for Science (blue icon).
You can also see whether planets can be colonized by your civilization, the type and size of planet (terran, arctic, lava, gas, etc.), whether it has any special qualities (toxic, ancient ruins, deserted cities, etc.), or rare minerals. Rare minerals are beneficial to the inhabitants as they confer special bonuses upon them.
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| Time to throw the Drake equation out the window! |
As you can see from the above screenshot, the bottom half of the window contains three panels. The left- most is where you choose to build a system development or starship; the middle panel is your Build Queue, while the right-most panel shows you the improvements already built as well as the starships available in your hangar. Building system developments will help to improve the rate at which your FIDS resources grow. Starships on the other hand are chosen from a predefined allotment of available ships; if you want improved designs, you will have to first access the Military View.
Research View
Technologies are arranged in a huge spider-web when you enter the Research View. You can pick and choose from four different wings - Exploration and Expansion (for faster/bigger ships and more colonization choices), Applied Sciences (for improving economy/research and discovering strategic resources), Diplomacy and Trade, and Galactic Warfare; the last two are self-explanatory.
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| Researching the weapons of war |
If I counted correctly, there are at least 136 technologies waiting to be researched. Plus each race has some unique technologies (shown in orange colours) waiting for you to unlock. You will need quite a while to familiarize yourself with this complicated web that the developers have woven for us.
Military View and Ship Design
The Military View displays a list of your fleets as well as offer you a palette of available ship designs. From here, you can manage your fleets and choose to create or upgrade ship designs. The Ship Design View is a rather complex beast of a screen, You can customize weapons, defense, and support modules to your heart's content, but if you wish, everything can be simplified with the click of the Autoupgrade button. Name your ship design, apply changes, and the design will be good to go!
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| Fine-tuning my very first Dreadnought |
Diplomacy and Negotiation Views
You are bound to meet other lifeforms in Endless Space, but luckily you have a simplified interface that allows you to check on diplomatic relations as well as to negotiate with alien civilizations. When you first open your Diplomacy View, you are represented as the figure shown in the centre. Surrounding you (like on the spokes of a wheel) are the other alien civilizations that you have made contact with. You can click on the magnifying glass icon to see each civilization's game score.
Clicking on a phone icon for any of these alien beings will bring you to the negotiation screen where you can haggle for diplomatic deals, Dust resources, exchange technologies, or even trade a star system. You can check on the Deal approval to see your chances of getting your offer accepted before actually committing your decision and seeing if your predictions come true.
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| Two friendly, two at war, two neutral, and one undiscovered |
Academy and Heroes
Just when you thought you've seen it all, Endless Space throws in an RPG-like Hero system. You can hire heroes who will confer you additional bonuses for planetary development and fleet management. These heroes will go up in level and acquire new skills. You are given a wealth of choices in deciding how to upgrade your heroes, however the corresponding cost to upkeep them will also rise.
Space Battles
The last part of Endless Space deals with combat.
Whenever your fleets encounter an alien starship, you will be forced into battle if they are hostile towards you (there's no way to retreat in the Alpha Release version). You can choose to auto-run a battle and hope that the throw of the dice will go your way. Otherwise, you will enter the battle simulator and hope to outwit the enemy yourself.
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| I'll turn my Hero into a Motivational Leader |
When you start a battle, you have access to an array of Battle Action cards. If you have a Hero assigned to your fleet, you will have more cards to choose from. Card choices run the gamut from outright offensive (Weapon Overclock) to outright defensive actions (Magnetic Field) and come with a corresponding list of bonuses and penalties. There are also engineering, sabotage, and tactics actions to choose from (depending on the skills you picked for your Hero). Some cards will actually require a token sum of Dust resource to use them in the fray of battle.
Space battles are divided into a prologue, three combat phases and an epilogue. Playing in the background will be beautiful 3D models of the enemy and your starships. You can't control the battles directly, but must rely on the few precious seconds during the prologue to quickly pick Battle Action cards and assign them to the three phases of battle. You should try to assign the right kind of cards for each of the three phases (long range - good for missiles, medium range - good for beam weapons, and short range - good for kinetic weapons). Otherwise you'll see it all go to waste as you end up with an embarrassing and often disastrous defeat.
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| Phase 1 - Long Range combat; notice I've already assigned my Battle Action cards (at upper left) |
Graphics, Interface and Audio
The graphics in Endless Space does a good sense of depicting a living, breathing galaxy teeming with civilizations waiting to explore, expand, exploit, and to exterminate their immediate neighbourhood. The various views - from galaxy, to system, to planet - all do a great job of creating an atmospheric sandbox for you to grow your empire. The asteroids, planets, nebulosities, and galaxies all look like they were plucked straight out from the Messier catalogue, and they look really sweet!
The various starship types look great in the Military and Ship Design Views. Each of the available races possess a unique character when it comes to starship designs. From the sleek, angular starships of the United Empire faction to the nasty looking predatory avian style ships of the Hissho, you will surely finding something that suits you in Endless Space. I can't wait to see the designs for the remaining three factions.
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| Another raging space battle |
The interface in Endless Space is truly a well thought out affair. Each view strives to show as much information as possible, and you have the ability to collapse the various sub-panels of the System View as well as to sort the columns of the Empire Management View (like when editing a spreadsheet). The Control Banner does a great job of summarizing all the important details you need at a glance when you move your mouse cursor over each of the icons.
The music soundtrack in Endless Space sounds both futuristic and satisfying to the ears. However, I did turn it off so that I could concentrate on managing my empire. The sound effects sound crisp and clear during space battles (especially when my ships go up in a mini supernova charged explosion), while the audio feedback from using the various views was just about right.
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| The Empire Management View |
Pros:
Amplitude Studios have shown that Endless Space (Alpha Release) is a robust and beautiful turn-based strategy production that could very well be the contender for the Best 4X game of the year. I shall revisit the game when it is officially released this summer.
- The user interface in Endless Space is elegant, with the developers going the extra mile to make your life easier while managing your galactic civilization.
- The Control Banner summarizes all you need at a glance, but you can drill down into each of the respective views to make important decisions.
- You can choose from seven different ways to win a game.
- The graphics for the planets and starships is stunning; I can't wait to see what else is in store in the final release.
- There is a system in place to prevent "base rushes" like in real time strategy games; you will need to research a particular technology to bridge this gap.
- I thought the music soundtrack did help to generate a tense atmosphere during gameplay.
- Even though it's an alpha release, Endless Space did not crash once for me.
- You can participate in the official Amplitude Studio forums to influence how the game will eventually turn out.
- Being an early adopter (by purchasing the Admiral or Emperor Special Edition) will net you some tantalizing rewards.
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| There's even more to fine tune in the Planet View |
Cons:
Although it's only an Alpha Release with a couple of glaring design issues, the game is still highly playable in it's current state. Expect much more from the developers as they steam along towards the Beta Release and the final release in Summer 2012.
- It is clearly made known that there is no multiplayer in the game's current state.
- You get absolutely no charts, graphs, or blow by blow playback to see what happened from the start till the last turn in your game.
- Playing with the largest galaxy setting and the most number of AI players eventually took me more than 30 seconds per turn (around turn 175); you will need some patience if you wish to play such epic scenarios. Music also began to stutter a bit around the 150th turn while turn processing was taking place.
- You can actually enable pirates in the game, but I found their presence illogical at times and thought they were a nuisance. Luckily you can disable this when starting a new game.
- The research tree is truly vast for Endless Space. You will however need quite a few rounds of playing to get really intimate with the nuances of researching particular technologies.
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| I win my first game! |
- To take over a star system, you must "lay siege" to it. Once it is blockaded, you will see a bar that shows your forces trying to take over it by force. There seems to be no other alternative to this - like a planet killer, or god forbid - a system wide annihilator that kills all life forms.
- Enemies can sneak past your star system especially if they don't end their turn in your system... I wonder if this was intentional.
- You won't get flagged for certain events at the beginning of each new turn - for example, enemies blockading your star system. You also can't filter out status updates that you don't wish to pay attention to.
- There's not much to do during space battles; you only need lay down three battle action cards, then sit back and watch the outcome. If only more interactivity could have been added to the game play.
- There aren't enough heroes to go around; it's strange having to hire an alien race to run my fleet or to manage my star system.
- You can't customize fleet names.
- The need for a special rare element to build a particular starship class was unexpected and something that may not sink well with some players.
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| Turn 172: I've been blockaded, bruised, and battered... |
Conclusion
As it is, I was wholly surprised by the current state of Endless Space. Even though it's an Alpha Release, I was totally engrossed after spending at least 8 hours with it. By then, I had played at least 5 matches, and actually won two of them. Although, I do wish for more features and tweaks to the Alpha Release of the game engine, I thought that my final experience with it was time truly well spent.
My recommendation is that you get on board now - become an early adopter and experience the ongoing journey in the development of Endless Space. If Amplitude Studio can listen to the feedback from their early adopters and make ends meet, then come this summer we'll all be in for a great big treat!
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| Resistance is futile in Endless Space |
Daily PC Game Review Score: 8 / 10 (Alpha Release only)
Review Date: 8 May 2012
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