For those of you who are fellow would-be interstellar emperors, Endless Space is a brand-new turn-based strategy game in the ‘4X’ space-empire building genre. I first saw it advertised on Steam several months ago, when they offered a discounted-price pre-order granting access to the initial alpha build to those who bought it in advance. Being a huge fan of MoO, MoO II, GalCiv, GalCiv2, and the whole genre, I went for it, and so far it has not disappointed. While I generally find the whole ‘alpha/beta test’ thing to be annoying (like most, I’m sure, I hate playing an incomplete game) the game itself has advanced fairly rapidly in the last few months and is now in beta phase. All eight races are now available to play and online multiplayer is currently functioning (albeit in beta state).
The developers (Amplitude Studios) are mainly French, apparently a bunch of ex-Ubisoft/EA developers for whom this is their first independent game. They’ve set up an unusual system (the ‘Creating Games2Gether’ initiative) where registering and/or pre-ordering the game gives everyone a chance to vote on their choice of new features, from actual game systems to new concepts and game art. The game itself is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a genuine Master of Orion II reboot (heroes, anyone?) although the individual design elements are certainly much different-looking than those of MoO II. It has a huge tech tree, a solid diplomacy system, a strategic resource system that really adds depth to the usual expansion rat-race (something that no other 4x game, at least to my knowledge, has ever had) very fresh and unique races (for the most part) and a good amount of background lore. The combat is largely automated, similar to the rock-paper-scissors system of GalCiv2 (ship design is king) although there is a small amount of player input. The battle system is unique and the combat graphics are fairly nice (I never get bored watching big fleets slug it out broadside style) even if the camera is still a bit twitchy. All in all it’s a great game that can only get better between now and release (and the devs already have a huge list of features, based on feedback from the community, that they’re looking to add, possibly in future expansions!)
The game can still be pre-ordered (at a discount) off of Steam (under Strategy Games > Endless Space). Information about the game (its current progress level, videos and screenshots, and profiles of the studio and its devs) as well as the ability to sign up for voting and forum access, can be found at the website.
