StarDrive: Review
Games for which the whole world raised money using Kickstarter are slowly starting to come out. As a rule, these are still small projects developed by small teams of enthusiasts, or even by individuals. But in many ways, the fate of crowdfunding in the gaming industry depends on the success of the first releases – whether it will become a popular way of creating a budget for independent developers or will go down in history as a funny incident on which so many hopes were pinned. The main caliber shots of Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera or Project Eternity, for the creation of which fans have allocated six-figure sums, are still a long way off, but melee artillery is already in action. Faster Than Light, which raised 20 times more money than the authors requested, showed that the simplicity of the idea and execution does not mean a lack of public interest. StarDrive, another seemingly simple creation of Kickstarter, although it cannot boast of astronomical donation figures, it arouses no less curiosity among fans of 4X strategies.
If you start a new game as people, the starting area will be our native solar system with all the planets.
Dreams come true
The main source of inspiration for the authors is the famous series Master of Orion. StarDrive is filled with references to this timeless classic – from gameplay features to the names and appearance of some alien races. But borrowing (in this case this is not blind imitation, but rather an attempt to breathe new life into interesting ideas) with just one series MoO are not limited to. It feels like the developers decided to take all the bright ideas of both classic 4X strategies and indie space-themed remakes that have noticeably proliferated lately, and from all this variety, create a game that can come as close as possible to the still unattainable 4X ideal.
How many strategies are so similar to each other in trying to reach fame? Master of Orion, came out over the last ten years? Here in StarDrive, at first glance, there is nothing unusual – but only at first glance. The player, as usual, is entrusted with the reins of one of the civilizations beginning to explore space, which he must lead to dominance over the entire galaxy. Battles of huge fleets of interstellar ships, bombing and amphibious assault on enemy planets, exploration and colonization of unknown worlds – all this is unlikely to surprise anyone now. But you soon realize that everything is not as simple as it seems. And it’s not at all about “real time”, which is quite atypical for space 4X.
The whole point, as usual, is in the details. Take, for example, creating your own race: the process is not limited to choosing one option out of eight proposed – in addition to the individual characteristics of each empire, it is possible to select a unique combination of advantages and disadvantages in accordance with the chosen strategy. For example, if you want to win not with brute force, but with cunning, then you can make the representatives of your civilization clumsy hulks, which gives a penalty to pilot skills, and spend the freed points on purchasing the racial skill “Duplicity”, thanks to which spies will be much more effective.
If the process of creating your https://fatbet-casino.co.uk/withdrawal/ own race in some strategies had a better embodiment, then the ship designer, also a familiar “feature” of such games, is here brought to almost perfection. Each vessel is divided into many small cells, which can be filled in manually by choosing the complete set yourself. The shipyard provides only the appearance of the ship (each race has its own set of hulls) and the number of available equipment slots, and what you get in the end depends only on the general designer, in whose role you will have to spend more than one hour. Creating a successful model of a starship is quite difficult, because design is not limited to simply filling available cells with the most powerful “guns” – it is necessary to take into account energy reserves, lay power cables along the optimal path, protect important components of the ship with armor and shields, position anti-aircraft turrets so that enemy fighters cannot sneak up close… The further you move along a special chain of scientific research, the more available hull models and the higher the variety of equipment. At the end of the game, you have to spend a lot of time at the shipyard: there is no hope for ready-made templates – it is better to create each model for yourself, depending on the tasks assigned to the starship.
It will not be possible to assemble an ideal ship – sooner or later a remedy will be found against a “Death Star” the size of the Moon “charged” with the latest technology. For example, one well-aimed shot by the pilot of a small fighter can lead to the destruction of even such a monster – and all because the nuclear reactor, the heart of every ship, was not covered by armor. And also StarDrive is not shy about transferring player designs to artificial intelligence, so don’t be surprised to see your unique design in another game as the basis for starships of other races.
The tinkering with ships does not end with the design of hulls. We change the chief designer’s suit to a general’s uniform – at our service is a well-developed fleet editor, which allows you not only to indicate the composition and size of the flotilla, but also to set the line of behavior in battle for each specific ship in its composition. This approach to space battle tactics allows you to get rid, as far as possible, of microcontrol in battles. One of the main drawbacks of most 4X games – the need to independently lead almost every ship into battle – had a deplorable effect on the pleasure of the game during long games. Here you can feel like the author of a military doctrine, but not a “company man” specifying goals for each individual “unit”.
What’s surprising is that StarDrive there is another “trick” that is exactly the opposite in meaning to the fleet editor. If anyone likes microcontrol, then let it be the most complete! Yes, at a convenient moment you can take any of your ships under direct control. Use the keys to set movement, shoot with the mouse – something similar happened in arcade battles "Space Rangers", only here the starships are a little more clumsy. Of course, these two approaches to controlling ships can and should be combined – for example, nothing prevents you from automating the fleet so that its main task is to ensure the protection of the flagship taken by the player under his direct command.
Creation Zero Sum Games not quite 4X in the usual sense. Of the four components of the classic formula – “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate” – more attention is paid to the last element. You will have to deal with the economy and other “peaceful” matters to the extent that this part of the game has been worked out very poorly – this is a strategy about war, and not about the development of civilization and space exploration. But who said it’s bad?
The time has come to clear our native systems of pirates, while good relations with other races allow us to forget about the external threat for a while.
It’s all just beginning
StarDrive, created almost alone, unlike most projects authored by small teams, it looks extremely nice. The graphics may not boast the use of the latest technologies, but they look stylish and do without the clumsiness in the spirit of Distant Worlds. The animated diplomacy screen is simply well made – pictures from there have a place on the desktop as “wallpaper” or a screen saver. There is no trace of 3D (and it is not needed here), but you can freely change the scale: from a view of half the galaxy to maximum zoom, in which one ship occupies most of the screen – one turn of the mouse wheel. And everything is surprisingly smooth. However, with performance StarDrive So far, not everything is so rosy – preferring not to waste time on such a trifle as “brakes”, the game quite often crashes to the desktop on the fly. The developers reassure us that this is a fixable issue and regularly release new patches.
The authors promise not only to work on stability. The opportunities available at the moment are far from the most interesting. It is already known for sure that in StarDrive will add multiplayer, which fans have been dreaming about since the release of the first beta version. But perhaps the most intriguing of the promises is a new game mode, where you will have to manage not an entire empire, but just one ship, while the other races sort things out in a standard 4X strategy. It should be something between Drox Operative and Star Control 2; this mode will also be available in multiplayer. It looks very tempting, but to bring this idea to life you will have to work hard to see if you can make a decent RPG out of the strategy?
However, the game architecture is simple enough to remake. Long before release StarDrive managed to acquire a lot of amateur mods – support for modifications from the very beginning was far from the last item on the list of development priorities. There are plenty of mods – from simple ones, like replacing textures, to global ones that quite significantly change the process of conquering the galaxy.
The party promises to be difficult from the very beginning – unfriendly neighbors are noticeably ahead of my empire in development.
The approach to creating games “from fans to fans” has once again confirmed its right to life, and Kickstarter can make another “notch in the butt” – for a completely frivolous budget, a good strategy has appeared that will be of interest to both connoisseurs of the genre and those who have just begun to get acquainted with the world of 4X strategies. Well, a steadily growing community that replenishes the collection of mods, and assurances from the developers not to stop there, backed up by action, indicate that the game has a great future.
Pros: excellent graphics; Feature-rich fleet editor and ship designer; atmospheric “space” music; modification support.
Cons: you need to get used to the interface, which sometimes confuses you; Frequent crashes to desktop.
